AFTER years of being lectured on how to run their economies and political systems, Asian leaders are walking with a new confidence. Confucian values have been trumpeted as the new foundation of economic success from the business schools of Paris through to Boston. The debate over those precepts has attracted a rising tide of opinion which says Asian values are different and hence its economies will not travel the same route as those in the West. However, if Japanese college graduates are to be taken as a litmus test of the theory, they would appear to be suffering just the same dismal prospects as their Western counterparts.
