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Here Asia Times wrote exactly what I think and say since about 3 years. Of course an E. Asian Union - and I think it will include sooner or later at least Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam - will be a capitalist project. So we have to create before the capitalists create their union our union - a union of the "ordinary" people (workers, peasants, anti-war activists, progessive artists...) from "below"!!

Thinking the unthinkable, a Confucian union
By Jan Krikke

JOMTIEN, Thailand - In 10 to 15 years East Asia will form a political-economic union along the lines of the European Union. It will follow the reunification of the two Koreas, likely to occur around 2007. A "Confucian" union will integrate Japan into East Asia the way the EU integrated Germany into Europe. By about 2020, the East Asia Union will be the world's most powerful bloc, ahead of the EU and US-led North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). And its core will be China.

Amazing? Credible? Incredible? Making these bold predictions is Lawrence Taub, an American futurist living in Tokyo, who recently visited Thailand. Taub has a long record of forecasting global trends in astonishing detail. In the 1970s, he predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iran's Islamic Revolution, and the entry of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)...

Is Taub risking his reputation by predicting a Confucian Union between China, Korea and Japan? Tensions are rising between Japan and South Korea over fisheries and possibly mineral-rich islands and sea beds, still unexplored; between Japan and China over oil and gas-rich islands where exploitation is contested. Resentment toward Japan runs deep in both China and Korea, over colonialism and World War II atrocities, and a union of almost any sort between the three countries would seem improbable to most observers. But Taub is adamant. "Enemies can become friends almost overnight," he told Asia Times Online in a sit-down interview.

Taub predicted the formation of a Confucian Union in his book, but during an interview with this correspondent he proposed an additional reason: that Korea and China would be able to "neutralize" any Japanese military threat - both nations are concerned about what they see as the threat of renewed Japanese militarism - by absorbing it into a political union. That makes the overall argument for a Confucian Union even more compelling.

"France and Germany formed the European Union less than a decade after fighting a bitter war. The EU integrated Germany into the European family of nations and neutralized its militaristic tendencies. But more importantly, the formation of unions is a sign of our times. Regional economies are banding together. They integrate their economies to pack a bigger punch in the global trade arena. Unions like NAFTA, ASEAN, the EU, and Mercosur [a South American economic union] make individual states stronger vis-a-vis other blocs."

Macro-history with a twist

Lawrence Taub is not an average, popular political observer or predictor of the future. He is among a select group of scholars to have developed a comprehensive macro-history. Macro-historians rely on "grand narratives" of human history to forecast future scenarios. Recent examples are Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Most historians and political commentators usually focus on their own areas of expertise - economics, technology, culture, business - which narrow the scope of their forecasts. Moreover, they tend to be Eurocentric and male-oriented. Taub is neither. His macro-history draws on Indian and Chinese thought, and like few other macro-historians, he claims women will play a key role in shaping the future.

When asked about other historians, political commentators and futurists, Taub.. pointed to Alvin Toffler's "third wave" theory as an example. "Toffler accurately describes the transition from agricultural to industrial to post-industrial society. That's a valid model, but it's only part of the picture. Toffler's macro-history could not predict the rise of East Asia as the world's leading economic center, nor the emergence of religious fundamentalism as the strong political force that it has become, which in the long run will evolve and have profound socio-economic implications in the future." ...

Taub said several factors will make the formation of a Confucian Union inevitable, among them a shared cultural heritage and growing international competition. "Despite a turbulent past and lingering animosity, the three countries speak the same cultural language, and their economies are increasingly integrated. Last year, China replaced the United States as Japan's largest trading partner. With the largest dollar reserves in the world, Japan and China resemble two mountain climbers linked by a rope. Technological cooperation between China, Japan and Korea is growing. Over-reliance on US-made software has fueled concerns about national security and industrial espionage and led to an initiative to develop CJK Linux, an Asian version of open source software."

Korean unification

Taub believes a reunified Korea will precede the formation of a Confucian Union. Asked about how reunification would come about, he said it would not be a repeat of the German experience. "North Korea is much poorer than East Germany was at the time," he told Asia times Online. "Spontaneous reunification is unlikely. But there will be a parallel with the German example. Just before it happens, when it will seem impossible, the momentum toward reunification will surge rapidly. The momentum is likely to start building in 2006, with reunification probably in 2007. The last hurdle will be the fate of North Korea's current leaders. They will insist on guarantees they won't be thrown in jail. China may offer them asylum."

Recent developments appear to support Taub's forecast. In December last year, the Guardian reported that European policymakers have been advised to prepare for "sudden changes" in North Korea. A European delegation, after visiting Pyongyang, predicted the collapse of the regime. The Guardian also cited Chinese academics who report a growing number of defections among North Korean diplomats. The South Korean press reported that the Austrian police prevented the assassination of Kim Jong-il's son Kim Jong-nam, by backers of another son of Kim Jong-il. All signs point at a power struggle in the top of the North Korean leadership, which in turn may explain the dying nation's nuclear saber-rattling.

Confucianism, communism, nationalism

Taub said he does not foresee problems with democratic Japan and Korea forming a political union with communist China. He believes pragmatism will prevail. He also pointed out that communism has become a mere label in China's political theater, but argued at the same time that communism and Confucianism have many similarities.

"Confucianism and communism, especially as introduced by Mao [Zedong] Ho [Chi Minh], and Kim [Jong-il] (in fact it was Kim Il-sung, no chr.!), were compatible," he said. "Confucianism, like communism, has no Godfather figure. And communism's strong state sits well with Confucian tradition, which is centered on the group, the family, the community, and the state. When the Deng Xiaoping government initiated reform, the ideological transition was smooth. The government didn't have to worry about the weight of opposing tradition, only about the Gang of Four - Mao's wife Jiang Ching and her three Cultural Revolution radical allies. All it had to do was go from socialism without a free market and private enterprise to socialism with a free market and private enterprise."

Taub has argued the name "socialist democracy" is not an oxymoron. "It perfectly describes the half-communist, half-capitalist hybrid system that all industrialized or industrializing countries are currently developing," he said. "It is a system that is half market and private business-driven and half highly central-government-regulated. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan also have that system - in fact Japan pioneered it - but they call themselves capitalist. Most Western European countries call themselves social democracies, which sounds pretty close to socialist democracy."

William Kelly, intercultural communications lecturer at the University of Southern California who wrote a foreword to Taub's books, pointed out that nationalism - strong in China and Korea and growing in Japan - will not necessarily be a hindrance to the formation of a Confucian Union. "It is obvious that the only way to fulfill the desire for national glory as well as economic success is by getting together in a union and being stronger than the other two blocs [the EU and NAFTA]," said Kelly. "First, Japanese militarism could be neutralized by such a bloc. But the real future danger could be Chinese rather than Japanese nationalism, since there is much resentment and a sense of grievance behind it."...