'Asian values' debate fires anti-western sentiment

By Jonathan Power

HONG KONG (JP): Maybe with the TWA "bombing" the "Clash of Civilizations," so eruditely yet erroneously predicted by Harvard Professor, Samuel Huntington, in Foreign Affairs is about to come about. Or, maybe, it is just a gang of ex-Afghan trained, once CIA-encouraged, ex-anti Soviet, now anti-American "freedom fighters" drunk on the rhetoric of "Asian values" and Islamic fundamentalist dogma?

Reading of the news of the downing of TWA 800 while sipping green tea in Hong Kong, having just finished a long interview with Governor Chris Patten, who was full of combative intellectual energy when it comes to discussing "Asian values," the TWA "bombing" --if that's what it is--seemed remote from the lofty arguments of this debate. But one more cup of tea later I began to realize it isn't.

Hong Kong is poised precariously between the two sides of the protagonists. China, to which it returns next summer, is one of the epicenters of the "Asian values" debate, reincarnating Confucian family values and collective identity above that of the individual as Maoism, the former glue that held the society together, slips into oblivion. But Hong Kong, in many ways the most emancipated of all Asian societies, is as determinedly global in aspiration as you can get this side of Seattle. The Hong Kongers with a standard of living higher than their colonial overlord, Britain, and very much plugged into notions of liberty and justice, have long outgrown such cliche of the Asian debate, "If we like it it's modern, if we don't it's western."

Nevertheless, Asian leaders, whether it be Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia or President Soeharto of Indonesia or Beijing-based intellectual, Geng Huichang, keep on reciting the litany of "Asian values." They don't mean to do it, I'm sure, but they do give some sort of cover to militant anti-Americanism and certainly lend more credibility than they deserve to such political movements as India's Hindu-nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata, the military junta in Myanmar, the Islamic fundamentalist regimes of Iran and Sudan or the Ba'thist dictatorships of Iraq and Syria.

At this point I let Chris Patten take up the argument. "Why in searching for identity and to preserve what is unique about Asian communities is it necessary to deny what is universal in mankind? Second, why do some leaders in Asia lack confidence in their community's ability to cope with economic success without losing their identity? Anyone who has visited Japan will know it's perfectly possible for Asian societies to embrace modernity without abandoning what is distinct and special about their way of life."

For Patten the Asian economic miracle is rooted in three ideas, three sets of values, "faith in progress, faith in economic liberty and faith in free trade." "They are," he adds, "quite simply universal values" which naturally lead onto the quest for other universal values. "Why is anyone surprised that as incomes grow, as the quality of life improves, as levels of skill and education rise, people start to expect to have more of a say in running their community's affairs? To make this simple point does not amount to cultural imperialism."

This conversation reminded me, as I watched the throng of highly educated, well-dressed Chinese in the Hong Kong tea room, of a wonderful observation by Matt Ridley in his iconoclastic book about sex and culture, "All people have stomachs, all human stomachs are roughly the same shape and all are found in the same place. Some people have small stomachs, some have slightly misshapen stomachs. But the differences are tiny compared with the similarities." This trip around Hong Kong, China and Japan reaffirmed what I've long observed: What is common among the human race is far more telling than what divides us.

When Asians talk about the Confucian emphasis on family values and collective obligations one could just as easily be in Italy or Spain for the former or Scandinavia for the latter (and you can see how both strands in European culture have been transported to America). Neither does it make much sense to claim from the Confucian ethic the work-drive that has made much of Asia prosperous. After all, it was only fifty years ago that the Confucian ethic was given as the explanation for Asia's backwardness, a torpor that only communism could remedy.

The fact is the "Asian way" is not as uniquely Asian or culturally driven as some contend. The "Asian values" debate has many useful ingredients but it does become dangerous when it becomes a cover for either authoritarian regimes or for groups of fanatics determined to take revenge on what they think is an omnipotent West.

In truth the economic and political progress now manifest all over the world is not a zero-sum game. Properly managed, just and democratically governed, all should benefit. There are indeed universal values and the world will be a better place if we all give them their due--which, by the way, is why in the last few years Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Pakistan and the Philippines have all chosen to shed their authoritarian ways in favor of democracy.