Asia back to the center of global 'cybercapitalism'

By Eisuke Sakakibara

This is the second of two articles based on a paper presented at the Asia Press Forum seminar on challenges and opportunities facing Asia in the 21st century. The seminar, from Sept. 14 to Sept. 16, was jointly organized by JoongAng Ilbo and the Yumin Foundation in Seoul, South Korea.

SEOUL: In considering this difficult transition to cybercapitalism in the 21st century, it is incumbent upon us to put Asia in proper perspective. According to the ordinary Eurocentric view of history, Asia has been regarded as backward, having started its modernization in the late 19th century or 20th century.

However, this is quite a biased view of world history in that it assumes that Western civilization is the only surviving civilization and that other civilizations have either disappeared in the sand or flowed into the mainstream of modern Western civilization.

Starting with Arnold Toynbee in the 1940s, objections have been raised to this orthodox but extreme view of world history. Toynbee mentioned three major illusions behind the orthodoxy: the egocentric illusion of the West; the illusion that the East never changes; and the illusion of progress as something which proceeds in a straight line.

According to Toynbee, the third point is an example of the tendency toward oversimplification which the human mind displays in all its activities. Samuel Huntington rightly raised in 1993 the issue of the reemergence of civilization consciousness or of historical relativism a la Karl Mannheim in his now well-known and controversial article, The Clash of Civilizations.

Japanese historians and intellectuals have also recently pointed out the importance of Asia in world history. Heita Kawakatsu traced the transmission of the invention of paper from the East to the West, citing it as a typical transmission of culture.

"Paper was invented by Sairin of China in around 105, and paper production technology was transmitted to Japan through Korea and subsequently brought about the flourishing of literature in the Heian period (794-1192)," Kawakatsu wrote. "Westward transmission to the Islamic world came about through Chinese prisoners of wars captured in the Battle of Taras in 751, which resulted in the widespread use of Samarkand paper. Printing was also invented in China. Wood printing spread both westward and eastward along with paper.

"Paper production techniques reached Baghdad in 793, Egypt around 900, Morocco around 1100 and finally across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain in 1150. The golden age of Islamic civilization flowered around this time. Subsequently, paper entered the Christian world: to Italy in 1276, across the Alps into Germany in 1391 and finally to England across the Strait of Dover in 1494.

"More than 1,000 years after the invention of paper, Christians at last recognized its utility. It was the middle of the Renaissance. As H. G. Wells said, emphasizing the importance of paper's presence in the Christian world, what made the intellectual renaissance of Europe possible was paper."

Not only the Renaissance, Kawakatsu argued, but also the religious revolution was very much influenced by the introduction of paper and printing technologies. The Bible became a best- seller among ordinary people only after this invention, and the geographical distribution of Protestantism is very closely correlated with the distribution of printing technology and the use of paper.

This is only one example of the way in which important inventions or essential consumption goods originated in Asia and then made their way to Europe through the Islamic world.

Indeed, the Renaissance and other subsequent phases of Western civilization have, to a degree far greater than previously realized, received a wealth of resources from Islam and Asia, as against Greek and Roman sources.

According to S. Tsunoyama, trade between Asia and Europe after the 15th century fundamentally changed lifestyles in both Japan and European countries. Japan, at that time, was a major producer of silver, while Europe obtained gold and silver from the Americas, which were then used to purchase luxury goods from Asia.

Japanese trade with Asia thrived in the 15th century and 16th centuries -- including trade with China, Korea, Okinawa, several Southeast Asian nations and India. Cotton, china, silk products, pepper, dyes, sugar and many other items were imported and in time formed the basis for traditional Japanese cultural expressions, such as kimono, structures employing the shoin architectural style, Japanese cuisine such as tempura, flower arrangement and the tea ceremony.

Tea also became a leading import commodity in England and in time came to constitute one of the centerpieces of the English lifestyle. Along with tea, silk, china, various spices originally used for preserving meat, sugar, dyes and cotton products were all brought to Europe in exchange for gold and silver.

It is well known that calico, a variant of cotton, had become so popular in England by the late 17th century that it had spawned a social phenomenon that was commonly called the India craze. The importation of calico was suspended around 1700, but it did not succeed in calming the "craze".

Finally, the use of calico itself had to be banned completely in 1720. This protectionist policy led eventually to the revival of the English cotton industry, involving a wide range of innovations that included the spinning jenny and other related machines whose presence eventually gave birth to the Industrial Revolution.

Thus, it is reasonable to say that the modern industrial age, which started with the Industrial Revolution and has dominated the world for the past 200 years, was triggered by the introduction of a wide range of Asian commodities into Europe from the 15th to 18th centuries.

Japanese modernization, which is widely perceived as having commenced with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, had actually taken place long before that, as was the case in England.

Here also, the importation of various foreign commodities through active trading with Asian and Mediterranean countries in the 15th and 16th centuries brought about the dramatic changes in lifestyle that blossomed in the Edo period (1603-1867).

Many Japanese historians are now beginning to recognize that Edo culture was essentially modern in nature, with the exception that continuous disarmament with strict regulations on foreign trade stripped the country of the capability to conduct modern warfare.

F. Braudel, in his path-breaking analysis of the Mediterranean world, describes the system and structure of interactions around the Mediterranean in the 16th century.

Here, the Islamic world is depicted as an integral part of the Mediterranean. World history, which is traditionally analyzed as the development of nation-states primarily in the West and as a series of separate incidents, is recast in a structural framework whose locus is geography and the three dimensions of "time".

Although Braudel does not extend his analysis to the Islamic world and the world east of there, what should be noted here is that his structural framework allows us to describe the world system before the 19th century as including, indeed as centering upon, the Asian region.

Tadao Umesao classifies the world into two regions, the first region consisting of the central Eurasian continent, including China, India, Mongolia, Russia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Arab countries, and the second made up of Western Europe and the Far East.

The second region is, so to speak, a hinterland, separated from the first region -- the center -- by distance and, in some cases, by the sea.

A succession of major civilizations, autogenetic in nature, thrived until modern times in the first region, while the secluded, peripheral second region absorbed many facets of the pre-modern civilizations of the first region while developing a modern civilization. According to Umesao, the four major ancient civilizations, stretching from Egypt to China, evolved autogenetically into the Roman, Islamic, Indian, Mongolian and Chinese empires and dominated the world for about 2,000 years.

However, developments from the 15th and 16th centuries through the so-called feudal period resulted in the birth of modern civilization in the second region, namely in Western Europe and in Japan. Umesao's paradigm, seen from the viewpoint of non- Japanese, may seem somewhat biased toward Japan, but he presents a persuasive argument as to why modernization succeeded in Western Europe -- with the United States, Canada, Australia, etc. seen as corollaries of Western Europe -- and Japan.

Also, his view that the first region -- the center of the Eurasian continent, that is, Asia in the widest sense of the word, from West Asia to East Asia (excepting the Far East) -- was the center of the world until the late 18th century is more convincing than the Eurocentric view of the world, which maintains that the mainstream of civilization ran through Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and the Italian Renaissance cities and into Western Europe.

In the Eurocentric view, there seems to be a major missing link, that is, the influence of Asian civilization, channeled principally through the Islamic world, on Europe, which historians like Braudel legitimately recognize.

If one rightly recognizes the central role that Asian countries, from west to east, have played in history, one can understand the significance of this region in the cybercapitalistic regime of the next century.

Asia -- where almost all the major religions of the world were born and where the most diverse civilizations competed and coexisted for more than 2,000 years -- is not a region like Europe or North America. Rather, it is a melting pot of religions, cultures, and races and is the arena where the interactions or networking of these elements has taken place.

After more than 100 years of suppression by colonialism, communism and the Cold War, Asia has come back to the center stage of global and cybercapitalism. Unfortunately, it has been hit by a severe crisis of global capitalism in 1997 and 1998, but we need to recognize that we could not have insulated ourselves from global and cybercapitalism, and cybercapitalism cannot prosper without Asia.

The key concept that needs to be analyzed here is globalization brought about by the revolution in telecommunications and information. Asia, as is the case with other parts of the world, is being engulfed by this process of virtualization and globalization.

But what is globalization really? Does globalization imply that a universal model or uniform set of values will eventually spread to all parts of the world and the world will become homogeneous both economically and culturally?

Definitely not. We need to recognize that what could be called "localization", or in Huntington's terminology "civilization consciousness" is proceeding simultaneously with globalization.

Although we have become much more exposed to global and virtual developments of markets and the economy, our attachment to ethnic and local cultural values has strengthened.

Nobuo Noda has recently summarized this seemingly contradictory phenomenon as the restoration of medieval "empires" in the 21st century. Virtualization and globalization of the economy will probably render the 19th century to 20th century nation-state somewhat obsolete and cross-border "empires" will be recreated. However, within the empires, as in the case of the Tang Dynasty or the Abbasid Dynasty, ethnic and divergent values will be tolerated.

Indeed, in Europe, the 21st century empire, Euroland, is being created respecting the participating country. Euroland could also be perceived as a major challenge to the expanding American empire.

In Asia, we still do not have any counterpart to either Euroland or the North American Free Trade Agreement or American movements toward a more coordinated and unified Western Hemisphere. Given premodern history in Asia and its legacy in the region, the creation of mutually tolerant regional bodies or "empires" would not be too difficult.

True, Asia encompasses much more diversity than Europe or the United States, but Asia has historical infrastructure and human capital to reunite these differences. Overseas Chinese and overseas Indians, for example, have provided useful networking and necessary coordination among Asian countries in their economic activities.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, our experience in this region, including the Korean-Japanese relationship, has not been successful. However, I think the time has come to heal these old wounds and proceed forward to form effective regional cooperation, both in the economic and cultural spheres, as our histories and traditions would probably not be conducive for many of us to join either the European or American empire.

It is possible that a few or even several different frameworks for regional cooperation or "empires" may be created in this vast Asian area as was the case in the premodern period.

To the extent that these "empires" peacefully coexist with each other, no problem will arise. Rather than being divided and ruled as in the 19th and 20th centuries, the 21st century should see a coexistence of thriving and mutually tolerant civilizations.

The process will probably be long and tortuous but we can start this between Korea and Japan fairly quickly. From the 5th to 7th centuries, these two countries were very close; Japan was a part of Korea so to speak. I would very much like to see close ties revived in the 21st century. Cooperation in trade and foreign exchange, for example, may be good areas to start our efforts.

It is incumbent upon all of us to recognize that we are in a period of great transformation. I have called this transformation the "transition to cybercapitalism". You can give different names to the great changes I described, but the facts are clear: We are undergoing very rapid changes.

In order to adapt to this great transformation, a shift in paradigm is clearly necessary. First, we should go beyond the 19th century and 20th century notion of the nation-state to develop closer regional and global cooperation, and I emphasize the need to do it within Asian region, particularly between Korea and Japan.

Second, although I did not dwell on it extensively in this speech, one needs to recognize the inherent instability of cybercapitalism and therefore promote a positive role for government that differs from regulations.

A new perception needs to be developed that government is not a substitute but a complement to the market and interaction between the two is quite important.

A shift in paradigm in a short period of time is by no means easy, but the next century will be faced with this difficult task from the start.

Eisuke Sakakibara Ph.D is a former Japanese vice minister of finance for International Affairs.