Values of East and West converging?

By Paulus Usmanto Njo

PERTH, Western Australia (JP): Can Australia integrate economically with Asia without the need to reform its liberal social and political order?

Or will Asian countries become increasingly like Australia as economic growth brings better education, improves the bargaining position of industrial workers and strengthens the middle class?

The above questions matter as the recent APEC's (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) free trade accord signed in Bogor necessitates a complex agenda of economic integration between Asia on the one hand and Australia and the United States on the other. While the so-called "open trade and investment cooperation" itself is difficult to define, what would amount to "fair business practices" will be even more problematic to integrate.

Following the historic Bogor Declaration, reactions in Australia have been mixed. Naturally, a positive account is provided by Prime Minister Paul Keating himself, who believes that the implementation of the accord will boost the Australian economy by a net gain of A$7 billion annually and a healthy creation of jobs in export-related industries.

However, Keating has not gone unchallenged. The Australian media has been embroiled in a heated debate between proponents and opponents of free trade in the past two weeks. Concerns are expressed that "socially irresponsible" producers of Asia will flood Australia with cheap imports and kill many Australian companies. Indeed, in a rather unsuccessful bid to preempt such concerns, Australia's Minister for Trade made an immediate announcement after the Bogor Declaration that the government would consult industry closely before changing any tariffs.

Free trade, some Australians believe, will lead to an escalation in the oppression of labor, human rights abuses and over-exploitation of the environment in Asia. An article written by a senator in Western Australia even argues that free trade will lead to an increase in child and adult slavery in countries like China, the Philippines and Indonesia.

These negative sentiments, after all, are more passionate than realistic. Increased trade and economic growth in Asian countries will help reduce the oversupply of labor. More than anything else, this will help improve workers' bargaining positions and welfare.

In fact, Australia has been pursuing a free trade regime ahead of most other APEC members, and its overall tariff level has been quite low. This it has achieved as its exports have grown quite appreciably in the past few years, rather than declining. With its home consumer markets saturated somewhat, Australia's economic expansion precisely depends on external markets. There is no better opportunity for the country than taping into the booming economies of Asia.

Of more interest has been the discussion on the impact of integration with Asia on Australia's socio-political culture.

In a recent workshop titled "Looking North: Reassessing the Framework and Unraveling the Myths" here, Professor Richard Robinson, director of Murdoch University's Asia Research Center, noted that Western industrial economies seem to have been faltering in the context of economic globalization.

These economies, including that of Australia, have been plagued by low or declining rates of economic growth, persistent structural unemployment, pervasive urban decay and low levels of savings and investment. Meanwhile, economic growth in East Asia has been sustained at close to two-digit levels in the past two decades. The picture that emerges has been one of a dynamic and cohesive East Asia, in contrast to the West suffering from weakening social fabric, moral decay and political disintegration.

While in the past the superiority of Western capital and industrial technology generated a "Westernization", or "Americanization" process, a reversal has been taking place. The story of an East Asian economic miracle amid relative stagnation in the West has given rise to the so-called "Asian values" or "the Asian Way". Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad have been in the forefront of the promotion of these values.

The Asian way as painted by its proponents rejects the institution of liberal democracy as known in the West. Rather than pursuing endless personal freedom, it emphasizes social cohesion and a well-ordered society. The liberal democracy in the West has worked hard to expand the scope of individual freedom. Contrary to this, Asian values seek to preserve social constraints in individuals, thus maintaining the thick web of human relations and obligations that have produced social harmony in traditional societies.

In turn, Asia's emphasis on social cohesion enables the state to marshal better coordination of national policies -- be they industry, technology or education -- hence achieving better rates of economic growth. The workshop, with participants from various universities in Australia, concurred that the East Asian economic miracle has been more than just a free-market story.

A strong message propagated by the proponents of the Asian way has been the claim that the Asian model of development is unique in its kind and not simply a transitional form of liberal democracy. However, the workshop participants rejected this claim, arguing that these so-called Asian values amounted simply to political rhetoric to justify authoritarian ruling. The fact that East Asia itself, let alone Asia, as a diverse region has not conformed with the idea that there is a single "Asianness" prevailing.

In turn, the workshop participants identified similarities between the Asian values and those of Western conservatism. By this they necessarily vetoed the famous "clash of civilizations" proposition by American sociologist Samuel Huntington.

Huntington's theory projects that the Asia Pacific region, rather than being an arena for cooperation is bound to become a major cauldron of conflict among three immutable cultural traditions: the Moslem, Confucian and Western civilizations.

Regardless of the real Asian way, it appears straightforward to find examples in the West of the pressure of individual rights over the economy. Fiscal difficulties can partly be explained by the burdens of state welfare and the demands of various interest groups for government handouts. In Australia, the articulation of workers' rights seems quite intimidating -- with present demands ranging from an immediate share of company profits in pay rises (or else a crippling national strike) to the recognition of workers' rights to inspect the company's book-keeping records.

Interestingly, in a recent television interview Prime Minister Keating slammed the current union's demand for a 15-percent pay rise, and cited a possible change in labor policy to "decentralize" the union's power to a firm by firm basis. In the United States, a number of academics have striven to introduce, or re-introduce, the "spirit of communitarianism". Some American schools have tried to instill the values of the community in their students and require them to do some community work as part of the schools' curriculum. Have these indicated a move back to conservatism?

Perhaps a process of ideological convergence between Asia and the West is taking place. The implementation of APEC's free-trade deal may both facilitate the process, and be facilitated by it for that matter. And in the long run a condition of socio- political homogeneity may set in. As the late John Maynard Keynes once said: "In the long run we are all dead."

The writer is a doctorate student at the Asia Research Center, Murdoch University, Western Australia.