LOS ANGELES -- China is like the relatively new baby on the block that the neighbors fawn over, mostly ignoring any negatives, acting as if it's the perfect child as the other children are unceremoniously pushed into the background. Overlooked, the others occasionally fling their rattles out of the playpen to get some measure of the attention they had been getting. This is the growing neglected feeling in Japan today.
You don't have to be rooted in Japan to understand the Japanese malaise. At the recent annual fundraising dinner of the Asia Society Southern California at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, a Japanese diplomat quietly muttered to me about how the Asia Society has practically been kidnapped by the Chinese. "It's all about China these days," he complained. "It's like Japan doesn't even exist any more."
Japan not only exists, but it's now economically resurgent. The years of domestic torpor are long gone; markets are popping and domestic reforms are happening. People tend to forget that even with all of China's phenomenal growth, Japan still has the world's second-largest economy. China is coming on strong, but it's not there yet.