Japan is Twenty Years Behind

Kiichi Miyazawa, the former prime minister of Japan, is honorary chairman of the US-Japan 21st Century Committee. This article is adapted from the committee's recent conference report.

Tokyo - The collapse of the former Soviet economy at the beginning of the 1990s was taken to signify the failure of central economic lanning and the triumph of capitalist market economics. The fall of the Berlin Wall should not, however, be seen merely as a symbol of the defeat of the socialist ideology. It also is a sign of the larger movement of global civilization from centralized to decentralized economic and social systems.