East Asia has become the center of the global economy and its technology and culture have global impacts. Yet Western culture, often in the destructive form of consumption, has increased its impact. Moreover, unnecessary tensions have emerged out of the completion and ultra-nationalism that follows from consumption-driven approaches to economics. People around the world look to Asia to provide an alternative cultural model and so we need to move beyond a simple focus on promoting trade, removing barriers to investment, and holding high-level meetings between ministers, vice ministers, CEOs and technical experts and pay attention to the true nature of culture as a determinant of priorities and values, and consider how much we have lost in a rush into modernity.Let us focus specifically on what China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam[1] can do to promote a deep dialogue on culture and its potential to inform future development.It is natural to think that the effort to promote integration and cooperation between the four countries should take place at the highest levels. The problem is that more often than not, it is assumed that “highest” refers to the highest rank (president, minister or CEO).But might the term “highest” be used in a different sense? Could it be that we need a “high level” discussion between Vietnam, China, South Korea and Japan not in the sense of institutional hierarchy, but rather in a cultural or philosophical sense. Perhaps what we need is events of the highest historical significance, of profound meaning for the participants and our common future.If anything, high-ranking politicians tend to be extremely limited in their understanding of culture, history and philosophy. They are interested in symbols of status and short-term publicity. The long flow of history and the world to be experienced by future generations are not of much use to them.Yet there have been moments like the signing of the Magna Carta, or the school of Confucius, that have been transformational and opened the doors to a new age of intellectual and cultural engagement.I am certainly not talking about dry academic conferences that bring together scholars from China, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam for presentations of specialized papers on culture, philosophy and history. Such activities have a value, but they are at a distance from government, from diplomacy and from the experiences of common people.Equally importantly, most scholars no longer see themselves as intellectual leaders, as people with a moral obligation to help others and to show the way to a better society. Rather they are lost in the task of writing articles for specialized journals, or presenting to students a predictable and uninspiring class. Vietnam, China, Japan and South Korea have lost one of their greatest traditions: the role of morally committed intellectuals. I think specifically of the commitment to cosmopolitanism and international cultural exchange that was shown by Pham Than Duat (范慎遹，1825-1885) who established a model for how common ground can be found between East Asian traditions.Above all, we must encourage closer cooperation in East Asia and put forth an inspiring vision for what is possible going forward by starting a discourse between the four countries that are fundamentally different in tone and content.It is possible to create exchanges between South Korea, Vietnam, China and Japan that are inspiring and that will set the groundwork for a profoundly different relationship between the nations as each is in turn transformed by that process. It requires that we embrace a level of high seriousness in our discourse, in our writings and in our speech which has been lost over the last forty years.First we must grasp our historical position. You can barely find anything that is traditional in the big cities of Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan. Whether you are looking at clothing, or architecture, or fast food, or even values systems, superficial reflections of a commercialized West have taken over Northeast Asia.That process took two centuries. Ever since the Opium Wars showed the tremendous technological prowess of the West, the cultural discourse in Asia had been permanently tilted in favor of the European tradition.But the Opium Wars were not won because of the superiority of Western culture, but rather because the West rapidly embraced a coal-based industrial society that brought with it tremendous advantages, but which has also completely dehumanized us by making technology the standard by which we judge people and progress.Now we see that fossil fuels are destroying our Earth and that the scholars of Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan who refused industrialization and favored a sustainable agricultural-based economy were right and that the Europeans were completely wrong.And today, Vietnam, China, Japan and South Korea face unprecedented threats from climate change, such run-away technology and from the concentration of wealth and those threats demand immense changes.One approach is to find a real solution in our own culture, the traditional cultures of Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan and to do so by engaging in a multilevel discussion (involving history experts, scientists, policy makers, businessmen, and ordinary citizens) on the original value of own traditions, examining how the rich philosophies of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism offer fresh approaches to living our lives, and suggesting new directions for innovation in governance, education, and the environment.Identifying the best of the past discourse on government and on the economy, and on political ethics, in the traditions of Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan will offer us access to tremendous visions of what is possible such as we will never find by reading through the Wall Street Journal.Equally importantly, bringing Vietnamese, South Koreans, Chinese and Japanese together to assess the potential of past culture will avoid most ideological conflict and rather emphasize common ground.The riches are tremendous. Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan have shared thousands of years of sophisticated governance which was based on sustainable agriculture and which emphasized ethical rules. The four countries developed complex structures for accountability and to maintain the balance of power. Although clearly there were failures, the successes in that tradition, now almost forgotten, were significant.We are not looking to Asia’s rich past for entertainment. We are looking for solutions to the overwhelming threats that we face today such as climate change, unsustainable development and the collapse of industrial society.The creative review of Asia’s common heritage at this critical historical moment could be a moment similar to the constitutional convention of 1787 in the United States. Leading scholars and thoughtful political figures gathered to discuss how the best of Greek and Roman ideas about governance could be reinterpreted to form the basis for ethical government in the modern age. That constitutional convention, because of the profundity of the discussion and seriousness of the intentions, set the stage for a new conception of democracy which would inspire generations of activists to press for political reform in the French Revolution and thereafter.The efforts of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in drafting the U.S. Constitution built on an earlier such effort: the European Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries.Renaissance thinkers in Italy and France during the fifteenth century seized on the best of ancient Greece and Rome and creatively reinterpreted it as a means of injecting vitality into a moribund civilization. They found transformative power in that past culture that helped them push toward new horizons. Looking back was not nostalgia, but rather an opportunity for innovation.