Asia through Asian eyes

Asia through Asian eyes

Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew presented an interesting set of
figures in his speech at the Tanjong Pagar GRC Lunar New Year
dinner last week. Western influence in Singapore stands at 60
percent today, he said, with core Asian values exerting an
influence of 40 percent. Asia's economic transformation will
settle the question of whether Asian or Western values are
better.

Mr. Lee's comments draw attention to an evolving relationship
between economics and culture in the region. East Asia's economic
rise is the central fact of the 20th century as it nears its end.
While civil war or national conflict can undermine it, or
misguided resistance by losing competitors can delay it, the
global center of gravity is shifting to this part of the world.
Culture, while not a mere product of economics, is a beneficiary
of it. A confident Asian culture based on the region's traditions
and values should therefore emerge to reflect the economic
transformation underway. Confidence includes the capacity to be
open to other cultures, to learn from them, to take from them
what is worthy and enduring. But confidence means also the
ability to resist those influences masquerading as the universal
standard, the inevitable, the eternal. In particular, it means
rejecting attempts to see modernization and westernization as
synonymous. To be culturally Asian is not to look away from the
rest of the world, but to be able to see Asia through Asian eyes.

-- The Straits Times, Singapore