TV REVIEW : ‘The Pacific Century’ Looks at the Ascendancy of Asia : 10-part series takes the viewer on a tour through a maze of unfamiliar histories, cultures and political systems.

As the American people sift through the sea of political verbiage this television season, groping for nuggets of meaning that might help them decide how to choose a President on Nov. 3, there’s one very important word that seems banished from the frenetic airwaves: Asia.

It’s a topic that doesn’t lend itself well to sound bites. But Asia has a critical connection to America’s future. It weighs enormously in our economic destiny and challenges our assumptions about the new world order.

Fortunately, somebody has bothered to fill the void of information with a remarkable documentary series that begins tonight on PBS.

“The Pacific Century” (at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28, 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24) is a collection of 10 hourlong episodes that in weekly installments takes the viewer on a guided tour through a maze of unfamiliar histories and cultures and political systems. Sounds esoteric? It couldn’t be more timely.

When candidates Bill Clinton and Ross Perot criticize the laissez-faire economic policies of the Reagan-Bush era, consider the possibility that what they’re really saying is that we need to be more like Japan.

The idea of a government-guided industrial policy remains an ideological taboo--or perhaps pollsters found it to be a big yawn for American voters--but it looms tacitly behind the debate on how government should manage the economy. No better lessons can be studied than those of East Asia, where capitalism has been reinvented to humble America’s manufacturing prowess.

Tired of incantations like “jobs, jobs, jobs” or “tax and spend”? Then be sure to tune into Episode 6 on Nov. 19, “Inside Japan Inc.,” or Episode 7 on Nov. 26, “Big Business and the Ghost of Confucius,” for well-crafted presentation of the roots of Asia’s vexing competitive challenge to American industry.

Framing the message in context is what makes this series so compelling. Executive producer Alex Gibney has combined his documentary skills with the insights of his father, venerable journalist and Pacific pundit Frank Gibney, to bring the subject alive in a narrative that is rich with historic anecdotes, depth of description and human drama.

The Gibneys begin their tales of the Pacific with an unglorified account of the Western imperialists who brought modern times--and massive opium addiction--to slumbering China in the early 19th Century. They show how the paradox of today’s China--the striking contrast between the economic boom of the coast and the rigid, hard-line communism in Beijing--actually echoes an old pattern.

Then they move on to Japan and explore that country’s modern ethos, forged out of a determination not to be exploited like China by the Western imperialists--or bested by barbarians, if you will. Indonesia and Vietnam are studies in Asian revolutionary nationalism, inspired in large part by Japanese invaders (liberators?) in World War II.

This is an account from the Asian perspective, and even major events in the Western world are seen through Asian eyes: A young Ho Chi Minh in Paris is bewildered by the senseless European slaughter of World War I. America, in a theme that snakes throughout the series, is a beacon of strength and democracy and hope, which ultimately disappoints Asian idealists.

The great achievement of “Pacific Century” is that it makes the story of Asia’s ascendance something that is accessible, and quite interesting. Old photos and film clips, contemporary movie footage and colorful woodblock prints are turned into a montage that captures the imagination as Peter Coyote narrates.

We hear the heartbreaking stories of the American electronics and automobile industries, unable to compete with their East Asian nemesis. But this is no dreadful lecture on Japanese management genius; it’s an entertaining and thought-provoking account of a dynamic part of the world, which may well become the proving ground of the 21st Century.

Karl Schoenberger, a former Times Tokyo correspondent, covers business and economics in the Asia-Pacific region.