 Geographically, Confucian Asia is a small region of Asia, the world’s largest continent, stretching from the Middle East to the South Pacific islands. As a region in East Asia, it covers the seven countries of China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and one dependent territory, Hong Kong. Each of these societies is remarkable for various reasons. China is the world’s most populous nation and has the fastest growing economy on earth. The economies of Hong Kong and Taiwan are among the world’s most globalized economies. Japan is the second largest economy and the most rapidly aging nation in the world. South Korea is the most wired nation and the nation that builds the most ships in the world. Singapore is the world’s richest non-liberal democracy, and North Korea and Vietnam are two of the world’s five remaining communist countries. North Korea, quite unlike Vietnam, remains the poorest and most closed socialist economy in the world. These two underdeveloped socialist countries are not included in this volume.