Pacific Destiny

Pacific Destiny is Robert Elegant’s comparative account of the economic and political transformation of modern Asia. Drawing on decades as a correspondent and on a later journey through the region, he examines Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and several Southeast Asian states as industrial growth shifts influence away from Europe and toward the Pacific.

The book combines historical explanation with interviews and observed social detail, moving between political leaders, factory workers, farmers, refugees, artists and urban residents. Written near the end of the Cold War, it captures both confidence in the region’s expanding economies and anxiety about nationalism, inequality, authoritarian government and the consequences for the United States and Europe of a new global balance.