His call hit a super-high responsive chord in Japan, an emerging empire that had just beaten Czarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. Sun was supported by Japanese leaders, including Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, and the all-powerful patriotic society Kokuryukai chairman Mitsuru Toyama, who believed China must be won in the rivalry between the white and the non-white races in Asia.

The pan-Asianism, which made Japan the leader in the regional effort to break way from Western domination, wound up in disaster. Japan began its empire building by invading Manchuria, then fighting Chiang Kai-shek’s China, and finally launching sneak attacks on Pearl Harbor. It was able to create a Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, which encompassed the whole of Southeast Asia and Burma as well. The short-lived empire collapsed with Japan’s unconditional surrender in the summer of 1945 to end the Second World War.

Now, with China rising as a real power in Asia, a new pan-Asianism is emerging in the world’s most populous region. Neo-Asianists in Japan, who have been increasing their ranks fast since before the end of the last century, have to concede that their country is no longer the undisputed leader as it was before the war. The People’s Republic of China is Asia’s top military power, which Japan is constitutionally forbidden to challenge. Japan has to resort to soft power — economic and cultural influence — to share leadership with China, advocates of neo-Asianism are convinced.

They have found like-minded thinkers and theorists in China, whose top national priority is rapid modernization to put a century of humiliation at the hands of imperialist powers to an end and recover its past glory. The Chinese began to assert leadership first by allying itself with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose member states were all once made dependents in the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japan countered with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s free trade zone scheme, but after he bowed out, Tokyo has tried what it can to achieve a rapprochement with China to help the ASEAN-plus-Two (China and Japan) or plus-Three (China, Japan and Korea) come into being.

Their concerted effort is necessary to allay the fears of ASEAN countries that were dominated by China for centuries before the invasion from the West and by Japan during World War II. These countries do not want either China or Japan, in particular, as the single leader in the world’s largest trade bloc when Australia and India join. They subscribe to the neo-Asianism with a co-leadership.

That has persuaded China and Japan to agree for the first time to a modus vivendi to jointly develop a disputed undersea gas field in the East China Sea. China’s foreign minister came out to declare that the joint gas exploration isn’t “a problem of someone losing rights and shaming his country,” but a foreign direct investment for the mutual benefit of the two countries.

China accepted a five-day visit to a naval harbor near Guanzhou by the Japanese destroyer Sazanami that carried relief goods for the victims of the devastating May 12 earthquake in Sichuan. Beijing also closed the Web site of the People’s League for the Safeguarding of the Diaoyutai Islands, which posted an open letter to the Central Military Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, of which President Hu Jintao doubles as chairman, urging a joint military action with Taiwan against Japan to defend sovereignty over the eight islets under whose waters lie vast gas and oil reserves waiting to be tapped.

Hu is planning a second state visit to Japan in less than a year to meet Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the sideline of a Group of Eight summit.

These new developments have tipped Taiwan toward pan-Asianism. The Diaoyutai crisis, triggered by the sinking of a Taiwan leisure fishing boat in a collision with a Japanese maritime safety frigate over the disputed waters off the small archipelago Japan calls the Senkakus, was solved thanks chiefly to Tokyo’s reluctance to antagonize Taipei by adhering to its wonted harsh no-compromise stand on controversy.

The Japanese apologized and promised reparations for fear their non-compromise would only work to push Taiwan to side with China in the dispute involving sovereignty over the islets which all three countries claim. Moreover, Taiwan, which is already heavily dependent on China for economic growth, has to join the ASEAN-plus-Three in order to survive as a viable economy.

The tilt toward neo-Asianism means the suppression of Taiwan’s new nationalism launched by President Lee Teng-hui and nursed by his successor Chen Shui-bian. They both called it Taiwan consciousness, insisting that the people of Taiwan are a race different from the Chinese, and therefore deserve a new national identity under the universal principle of self-determination of peoples. President Chen carried on a de-Sinicization campaign, with the proclamation of a new constitution for the country as its ultimate goal. The drive came to an abrupt end with the election of Ma Ying-jeou as president on March 22, but the opposition Democratic Progressive Party continues to rally support for Taiwan’s new nationalism.

In the end — and in the not-too-distant future — Taiwan will espouse neo-Asianism, though fully aware that its strongest supporter, the United States, does not approve of it. Washington does not want Tokyo and Taipei to get too close to Beijing in order to retain exclusive leadership by the U.S. in Asia and the Pacific.