LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- In early 1997 I was hosting a reception at a Geneva hotel following a workshop on trade issues when a Japanese official took me aside. Looking at me conspiratorially, he whispered, "Professor Lehmann, I have an important question to ask you: How long do you think it will be before China catches up with Japan?" I looked at him gravely and replied, "Oh, I am not sure, Harada-san (not his real name), maybe about three weeks."

He was clearly stunned. Not the answer he expected! In fact, I am pretty sure that what he wanted to hear was that Japan was so advanced and China so backward that any catching up was unlikely to take place in his or his children's lifetime. I went on, however, to tell him I did not know what his question meant. In terms of purchasing power, China was possibly already bigger than Japan. In gross domestic product per capita, it would probably be a question of several decades at least. In technology, Japan's advance is pretty phenomenal, though at the time I had not anticipated the extent to which Taiwan would be transferring technology to the mainland.

But I went on to explain to Harada-san the reason for my answer. It had to do with the human factor, specifically the youth human factor. Earlier that day I had been teaching in my institute's MBA program. The MBA program at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) is small (80 students), highly exclusive and highly international (about 35 nationalities). The Chinese participants are undoubtedly among the best, brightest and boldest. They speak English fluently, they are confident and articulate, they network easily. While the institute applies no quota system, we try to get a reasonable balance of people from different continents and countries. The "difficulty" we have every year is in having to select from so many highly qualified Chinese candidates.

With Japan, the difficulty is the reverse. In 2001 there were eight Chinese students and one Japanese (who studied in New York). We do get very good Japanese candidates, but they are difficult to find. It is extraordinary that in the beginning of the 21st century, almost 60 years since the end of the war ended, during which time Japan has been a member of the international community, Japanese men in their early 30s -- graduates of such prestigious universities as Waseda, Keio, Todai and employees of such "international" firms as Sony, Canon, Matsushita, Sanwa Bank -- are such poor speakers of English, so inarticulate, so unworldly and so stiff in the company of foreigners. (Women tend to be better!)

Japanese tend to be abysmal networkers. At international gatherings, the Japanese in attendance, instead of broadening their foreign contacts, almost invariably stick together like lemmings.

China is, of course, a huge continent, and there are vast differences between the savvy, street-smart Shanghainese and the peasants in remote provinces. The point that can be made, though, is that while it remains to be seen whether China emerges as a global power -- and the answer is probably no for the foreseeable future -- it is almost certain to become a global player.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable ways in which China has "caught up" is in the emergence of the new generation of a globally oriented elite. In a speech at the annual conference of the Britain-based International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore in 1998, Lee Kuan Yew made the point that, although China has a closed political system, it is intellectually and socially much more open than Japan.

A Japanese former ambassador was furious and strongly protested. Lee stood his ground, basing his remarks partly on the assertion that the collectivist nature of the Chinese regime notwithstanding, the Chinese, as he put it, are not "groupies" but far more individualist than the Japanese. Japanese groupism is exclusive and introverted, hence resistant to foreign contacts and foreign influences.

On the basis of current trends, including an assessment of Japan's next generation of leaders, Japan is destined not to be a global player. As a colleague of our institute and longtime Japan observer, Dominique Turpin, and I wrote in a recent article, when the globalization train appeared, Japan was not on the platform. It was still hurtling down the nationalist track.

In the Cold War era, when nationalism and mercantilism could be practiced under the aegis of geopolitical realpolitik, Japan did exceedingly well. But times have changed. There has been, to coin a phrase, a "paradigm shift."

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the Internet have ushered in the era of globalization. In times of profound change, there are three types of responses: making things happen, watching things happen (and reacting), and wondering what happened. In the heady globalization revolution, Japan has been emphatically in the third category.

Bewildered, wondering what has happened, Japan has been marginalized, quasi-ostracized, from the global arena. Just as this phenomenon has been manifested in many ways -- poor English language capability, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine in August, the failure of Japanese companies to globalize management, etc. -- it has been caused by diverse forces.

In this series of articles on Japan in the global era, I shall look at the more egregious manifestations of Japan's failure to respond, and assess the underlying causes. I intend to propose means by which Japan can remedy the failure. A global Japan would be good for both Japan and the globe.