Asian values and the clash of civilisations

Kishore Mahbubani draws this powerful picture about the West's concern for human rights in developing countries: "From the viewpoint of many Third World citizens, human rights campaigns often have a bizarre quality. For many of them it looks something like this. They are like hungry and diseased passengers on a leaky, overcrowded boat that is about to drift into treacherous waters, in which many of them will perish. The captain of the boat is often harsh, sometimes fairly and sometimes not. On the river banks stand a group of affluent, well-fed and well-intentioned onlookers. As soon as those onlookers witness a passenger being flogged or imprisoned or even deprived of his right to speak, they board the ship to intervene, protecting the passengers from the captain. But those passengers remain hungry and diseased. As soon as they try to swim to the banks into the arms of their benefactors, they are firmly returned to the boat."

That little polemic makes many points. It draws attention to Western hypocrisy, to the fact that conditions in the developing countries are very different from those in the West, and it implies that we need to judge the Third World by standards that are different from the ones we use for developed countries.

At its core, it's the old controversy about "Asian values", but Mahbubani widens the debate to include not just Asian political systems but the much larger questions on the reasons for Asian backwardness, how the region can catch up with the West, and the connection between economic development, democracy and an open society.

Mahbubani is well qualified to discuss these issues in depth. His Indian ancestry, Singaporean nationality, English education and his position as globe-trotting high-ranking diplomat enables him to assess the viewpoints of both the East and the West, while Singapore's spectacular economic success ensures that his views carry weight.

The book's title, "Can Asians Think?" is deliberately provocative, implying that centuries of submitting to the West and of being mired in poverty indicate that Asians are incapable of thinking for themselves. Mahbubani's question is a challenge, a wake-up call for Asian societies to prove themselves. All the more so because Mahbubani makes it amply clear that, for all his dislike of Western attempts to force its values down Asian throats, he firmly believes that colonialism is not the factor that holds Asia back.

As the author states in his "Ten Commandments for Developing Countries in the Nineties", the first commandment is "Thou shalt blame only thyself for thine failures in development."

The other commandments include abandoning state control for free markets, abandoning North-South talking shops, burying Karl Marx, rooting out corruption, refraining from subsidies, refusing to borrow for unproductive purposes, and so on.

Nothing particularly new or remarkable, and the bit about abandoning state controls is surprising, given Singapore's eminently successful experience with state capitalism.

But the strength of this book does not lie in its economic prescriptions. Of far greater significance are the questions he raises about the development process. To take the example closest to our hearts, Mahbubani compares India's free press and democracy with China's dictatorship, and points to China's far better economic performance.

He even supports the Tiananmen massacre, on the plea that failure to control the demonstrators would have caused chaos throughout China. Most Indians would disagree with the author's views on press freedom ( including Amartya Sen, who pointed out how it has been the reason why famines have been avoided in India, unlike in Mao's China).

But there is little doubt that all successful late-developing economies, ranging from Germany and Japan to South Korea, Taiwan and now China, have developed under authoritarian rule, making the Indian experiment unique.

Mahbubani's position that it is only after societies reach a certain level of economic development that they start becoming democratic is certainly a plausible one. China, for instance, may be right in putting the economic horse before the democratic cart.

Also interesting is the author's view that the Western assumption that their values are necessarily universal values is mistaken. At one level, this means that cultural diversity will continue to exist, despite the fears of McDonaldisation.

Mahbubani points to the effect of the TV broadcast of the Ramayana, which emptied Indian streets, an effect no Western cultural import could hope to match. The support seen for hardline Hindutva among affluent expatriates in the West could be another example. Clearly, economic progress is having some very strange side-effects.

Mahbubani asserts that the twenty first century will be one where the flow of ideas will be two-way, rather than the usual one-way flow from the West to the East. Increasing globalisation is likely to make the East loom much larger in Western minds.

But will that make the West more receptive to Mahbubani's so-called Asian values (attachment to the family as an institution, deference to societal interests, thrift, conservatism in social mores, respect for authority)?

Mahbubani's underlying assumption is that all comparisons must be made using the measuring rod of economic progress. If a different criterion were to be adopted, say spirituality, then the two-way flow of ideas has been much in evidence""maharishis, Zen monks, and nirvana have long been Asian exports. The irony of Mahbubani's position is that he rails against Western values at the same time as he unquestioningly adopts their chief one""materialism.

But that may not be a bad thing.

CAN ASIANS THINK?

Kishore Mahbubani
Penguin
Price: Rs 295
Pages: 263