Here in the Philippines, it's not what businesspeople are talking about that's interesting, but what they're not.
There's lots of chatter about the US economy and China's growing influence. South Korea's impressive performance comes up, too. So does Indonesia's worsening situation. What doesn't come up in conversation is Japan, Asia's biggest economy and its traditional engine of growth.
"Japan is less of a factor in Asia's economy and it's role is getting smaller and smaller," says Raul Concepcion, chairman of the Federation of Philippine Industries.
Adds Jose Cuisia, president of Philippine American Life and General Insurance Corp, a unit of biggest insurer American International Group Inc, "There seems to be no real direction in Japan, no real leadership. Pretty soon, Japan will be overtaken by others in Asia anyway."
Such views raise a touchy question: Is Japan's economy sliding into irrelevance? To many here, the answer is that it already has. True, Japan's financial markets remain too big for investors to ignore its economy. The yen also is Asia's most international currency, making markets and policy makers equally loath to write off Japan just yet.
Yet 11 years after Asia's locomotive sputtered to a stop, Tokyo is no closer to getting its engines going again. In fact, Japan's current leadership is at a complete loss over how to fix things. It's taken a while for this sad reality to make its way around Asian capitals, but it's sinking in.
From Beijing to Manila to Seoul to Singapore, officials are forging their own economic futures independent of Japan. In decades past, Asia's smaller players could rely on Japanese consumers to buy their exports. With Japan awash in deflation, bad loans and political gridlock, that's no longer an option.
Publicly, government officials are far less inclined to dismiss Japan. One reason is that it remains Asia's most generous donor country. Even though Tokyo has cut its Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget, countries like the Philippines still rely on Japanese funding for key infrastructure projects. Biting the hand that feeds Manila is hardly diplomatic.
Yet Philippine Finance Minister Jose Isidro Camacho leaves little doubt that he doesn't expect Japan to contribute much to growth in Asia in the near future. "Japan has been in recession for so many years that there's very little downside anymore," Camacho explains. "Whatever it's done to our trade has already happened."
A full-blown banking crisis that sends shockwaves around the region is a different story, of course. But Tokyo seems determined to avoid a meltdown; more likely, Japan will continue muddling along for a few more years. Unfortunately, muddling along is the best Asia can expect from Japan in the years ahead.
A report released Wednesday by the Japan Center for Economic Research predicts that if structural reforms were ever to be implemented, economic growth would be around 1.5 percent to 3 percent by 2010. If correct, this scenario could all but assure Japan's irrelevance. Yet Tokyo isn't implementing reforms.
Politicians are talking lots about the need for change, but doing nothing to exact it.
"If the Japanese government continues to favor short-term comfort over long-term reform, Japan seems to me likely to remain on a road characterized by stagnation," former US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky said in Tokyo on Monday.
"Year, by year, Japan's influence will erode, and the centrality of the US-Japan relationship to Pacific affairs will diminish along with it."
In Asia, China's rise is increasingly eclipsing Japan.
China's 7.3 percent growth rate last year contrasted markedly with Japan's slide into its third recession in a decade. China is sucking up the jobs and capital Japan once took for granted. Even individual investors from Tokyo to Hiroshima are shunning Japanese stocks and buying Chinese shares.
If Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi understands how much clout Japan is losing on the global stage, he's not admitting it.
In recent weeks, his government has even taken steps to damage Japan's status as Asia's financial-market hub. It's turned to banning short selling of Japanese stocks, and mostly penalizing foreign brokers for engaging in the practice.
The strategy is part of the "invisible hand" dynamic that seems to drive up share prices this time of year as Japan approaches the end of its fiscal year on March 31. The pattern is just one indication that five years after its so-called "Big Bang" financial reforms, Japan hasn't conformed to the kinds of capitalism exercised in other industrialized nations.
Here in Manila, Japan's woes aren't getting as much attention as you'd expect. Even the drop in the yen in recent months -- and the expectation for more precipitous declines this year -- isn't raising too many eyebrows.
"The Japanese yen is not the risk," Camacho explains.
"What the weak yen does to the Chinese currency is the risk because I think that's a competing currency for us, the yen is not."
It's not clear that Tokyo is succeeding in shoring up its influence in Asia -- or the global economy, for that matter.
Koizumi has scrambled of late to strengthen economic and trade ties with neighboring countries. But it's mostly been an effort to counter China's recent economic-cooperation agreements with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Nothing will restore Japan's status as the economic anchor of Asia like a strong recovery. Each year that goes by without one will see Japan's influence wane -- not only here in Southeast Asia, but everywhere.
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