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