The first country to give the vote to women, New Zealand presently has the distinction of having all three top public posts occupied by women: the governor general, the prime minister and the chief justice. This provides a clue as to why at times Wellington has played a role and exercised an influence in world affairs out of proportion to its size, as social and foreign policy exemplar.

Prime Minister Helen Clark was in Japan not long ago on her first official visit as head of government. Addressing a mixed audience of Japanese and New Zealanders during an evening reception, she remarked that New Zealand was affordable, hospitable, safe and sophisticated -- a good place for Japanese to visit or send children to be educated in. It is also beautiful, environmentally conscious and socially progressive.

New Zealand governments have been cultivating literacy in Asian affairs. The impetus for this is economic: Rising living standards in Asia will lift New Zealand's growth prospects in their wake. But engagement with Asia is broader than just trade. It includes such other measures as flows of investment and people and cultural exchanges.

For a generation now, the defining characteristic of Asia-Pacific salience in world affairs has been economic dynamism. The Asian tigers grew three times as fast as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economies in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Until the 1997 financial crisis, throughout the arc of countries from Indonesia to South Korea, there was optimism that life would continue to get better and a willingness to work hard in order to ensure that it did.

In the final decade of the 20th century there was growing recognition that New Zealand's economic and strategic destiny was tied to the fate of the Asia-Pacific region. Where for two centuries New Zealand fought against its geographic reality in seeking security from Asia in the spheres of defense, trade and immigration, it now seeks comprehensive security in Asia through bilateral and multilateral arrangements. Cabinet ministers lead delegations to Asian capital markets in search of more investment, market access and tourists and students.

The Asian economies continue to possess the greatest growth prospects, from India in South Asia to China in East Asia. Through the twin combination of expanding populations and rising disposable incomes, Asia is likely to be the world's fastest growing consumer market. The demographic balance sheet is being changed with growing populations (at a rate more than three times that of industrial-countries average), ascending life expectancy and declining infant mortality rates. As in the West, an expanding middle class will demand better services in health and education and patronize the tourism and travel sectors more frequently.

Furthermore, the proportion of young adults in the whole population is rising in Asia, which increases the number of households. The structure of consumer demand will be transformed fundamentally with the trend toward more urban households centered on double-income families. Demand for housing will rise, as will demand for labor-saving and leisure-activity consumer durables like household appliances (refrigerators, microwave ovens, laundry machines) and electronic entertainment machines. (This is part of the problem in Japan, of course. The prolonged economic slump has meant that consumer spending on lifestyle choices has been curtailed, thus feeding back into the slump.)

All societies are burdened with historical baggage. In New Zealand the old stereotypes of Asia's political backwardness and economic poverty have yet to be replaced by a general appreciation of its adaptability, dynamism and diversity. Countries that were formerly aid recipients are now major trading partners and sources of investment, technology and tourists. Too many New Zealanders are still too smug about their relative superiority, with no basis in objective reality for their smugness: New Zealand's GDP per capita is now less than half that of Singapore.

In the 1980s, the New Zealand government, convinced that an advanced "Western" lifestyle is not sustainable without a competitive trading position and that domestic economic reforms are not separable from external trade policies, tried to move the economy away from a protected one to a regionally and globally competitive one. The initial pain was heavy, while the subsequent gain seemed neither to be shared evenly nor to be self-sustaining. Helen Clark became prime minister in part because of the political backlash against perceived market excesses of the previous government.

Whatever they try, Kiwis have not been able to arrest the slow and steady decline of their economic fortunes relative to that of Asia-Pacific and the OECD. The question is whether sustained economic under-performance will lead to increasing international marginalization.

Socially, crime statistics do not always bear witness to claims of New Zealand being a very safe society.

More fundamentally, the country has never fully resolved the tension between biculturalism and multiculturalism. Asians can feel the sting of exclusion, of not belonging, even while the once-dominant Europeans rush to embrace the Maori or when some professional associations change the rules of the game in order to restrict entry by over-achieving Asians into their coveted professions.

Nor is New Zealand necessarily very tolerant of those who challenge the prevailing political correctness. Small size confers the strengths of social cohesion and a sense of community. But the very same factors can stifle contrary viewpoints in the oppressive pressure to conform.

On all counts, enhanced interaction between New Zealand and Asia should prove to be mutually beneficial by promoting a healthy exchange and cross-fertilization of experiences, ideas, policy debates and sociocultural diversity. They should learn from each other's mistakes and profit from reciprocal strengths.