I think the "Japanese moment" in Asian history is over. Japan, because of its cultural cohesiveness resulting from its position as a mountainous island, has always been able to embrace massive and radical change more quickly than most other countries. It did it during its rise as a unified state during the Nara period, when it embraced a massive infusion of cultural and governmental innovation from China and Korea, and it did it during the Industrial Revolution. However it cannot compete as a local power against a strong China.

If China in the modern age was going to be held back by things like ancient cultural traits, China could never have accomplished the economic transformation that has occurred over the past 35 years. The changes that have occurred in a single generation have gone directly against so many of the fundamental classical traditions of Chinese history as to constitute a genuine revolution, more so even than in 1948.

Culture matters, but cultures are not fixed constants. They undergo constant change to adapt to the underlying fundamentals of the societies they inhabit, and no more so than when the economic superstructure has changed as radically and completely as it has in China in the past generation. Old assumptions need to be revisited.