Singapore is a republic, which makes it a nation ... and it is smaller than Taiwan, which is actually pretty big.
Taiwan is something less that 1/10 the overall size of Japan, but then again Japan is spread out over many islands, and has it's share of uninhabitable terrain.
It wouldn't seem that Japan would be attacking Taiwan anytime soon either (for hosts of powerful, political reasons). But then we weren't contemplating Japan as a potential among "tiny Asian nations".
Ok.
So we've got (at least?) two contenders. Add East Timor? Zoom in to see how tiny Macau is. It makes Hong Kong look big..but those are not "nations" enough, now could they be? everybody was kung fu fighting last fm link to that one-hit wonder tune from 1974
Now that that's established...
do we put stock in some slim mention of a "vision"?