group of south-east Asian academics, bankers and former ministers produced a document called Towards a New Asia; it advocated democracy within the rule of law and, while paying tribute to the importance of economic growth, suggested that Asia should ‘move to higher ground’ and ‘become a greater contributor to the advancement of human civilization’.58 These sentiments reflect one of the great ironies of the debate: south-east Asia’s leaders are often attacked by their fiercest critics not for being too ‘Asian’ but for importing the worst aspects of western societies – consumerism, materialism, pollution – and labelling them ‘Asian values’. As one Malaysian artist said of Mahathir: ‘Everything he’s doing is western – the assembling of cars, privatization, the “multimedia corridor”, everything. This drive for market-driven development is a very western concept.’59 Sondhi Limthongkul, a Thai businessman who tried to build an Asian media empire, is equally scathing. ‘The problem of most emerging nations in Asia-Pacific is always the absolute worship of economic growth rather than the quality of life,’ he told a conference in Hawaii. ‘It’s very unfortunate that we have learned and inherited so well from the West.’60
If they are interested in formulating any ‘Asian values’ at all, southeast Asia’s next generation of leaders will want to do so by injecting ideas they see as genuinely Asian into a body of beliefs they accept as universal and which seem inevitably to permeate any society that has undergone an industrial revolution. ‘The Asian world and Asian civilization cited so often of late have their origins not deep in the past but in modernization this century in an Asia in contact with the West,’ wrote playwright and professor Masakazu Yamazaki. Modernization, he said, had affected the entire fabric of Asian societies, leading to the rise of industry, the formation of nation states under legitimate institutions and the secularization of ethics and mores. ‘Members of the Association of South East Asian Nations have nearly reached consensus on such fundamentals as the separation of politics from religion, one-man – one-vote representation, and public trial. When it comes to social welfare, women’s liberation, freedom of conscience, access to modern healthcare, and other social policies, almost all the countries of the region now speak the same language as the West.’61 Kim Dae-jung, the Korean politician who has fiercely opposed ‘Asian values’ and the suggestion that Asians are by nature undemocratic, once noted that ‘moral breakdown is attributable not to inherent shortcomings of Western cultures but those of industrial societies; a similar phenomenon is now spreading through Asia’s newly industrializing societies’.62 A dissident who spent his life opposing authoritarian rule in his own country, Kim was elected President of South Korea in December 1997, vowing to promote democracy and transparency and bring an end to the collusion between government and big business.
Even the supporters of ‘Asian values’ accept that their countries will be more democratic and less authoritarian in the future, although they differ on the form democracy should take and on how long it will be before their people are ‘ready’ for the rough and tumble of genuine democratic debate. To speak of unambiguous ‘Asian values’ appears increasingly eccentric as the new millennium approaches. There was something bizarre, for instance, about the sight of Edward Heath, the former British prime minister, arguing on television with Martin Lee, the Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigner, about the political implications of the passing of the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping on the day his death was announced. There was the westerner Heath espousing ‘Asian values’ and insisting that Chinese and Asians did not need democracy as understood in the West (‘The Asiatic countries have a very different view’); and Lee, the Asian, saying that Deng himself had accepted the inevitability of political reform and arguing that Asians wanted democracy as much as anybody else (‘I do not agree that there is such a thing as Asian values’).63
The heyday of ‘Asian values’ seems to have passed. In Singapore, opposition politicians say Lee Kuan Yew talks less about Asian values and Confucianism than he used to. Mahbubani has toned down his comments as well, declaring in 1997 that Asians want good governance, open societies and the rule of law.64 In Malaysia, Mahathir still denigrates the West from time to time. But he is as likely to mention the threats and opportunities of globalization – a more inclusive view of change – as to declare the superiority of the ‘Asian Way’. Societies and cultures are changing so fast in south-east Asia that it hardly makes sense to attribute fixed values to them and try to preserve them intact from an imaginary western enemy. The argument that modernization leads to inevitable changes that are both good and bad is accepted throughout the region. Western governments may have learned something too. They can no longer lecture Asia about human rights and morality without having their own embarrassing failings – crime being the most obvious example – thrown back in their faces by their well-educated and well-travelled Asian interlocutors. In south-east Asia, however, the battles over social change and political reform are only just beginning. The campaign for ‘Asian values’ will come to be seen in the years ahead as a pragmatic interlude, during which Asian leaders briefly sought to justify authoritarian rule before losing power to the middle class they themselves had helped to create by managing their economies for so long with such success.
You’ll be left behind. Then in twenty, thirty years’ time, the whole of Singapore will be bustling away and your estate, through your own choice, will be left behind. They’ll become slums. That’s my message.
– Singapore prime minister Goh Chok Tong, warning voters before the January 1997 election that their housing estates would be denied government renovation funds if they elected opposition members of parliament. The ruling People’s Action Party won 81 of the 83 seats available.1
Golkar [the Indonesian ruling party] officials calculated as far back as last year that they would win precisely 70.02 per cent of the vote on polling day.
– Financial Times, 24 May 1997. Golkar went on to win 74 per cent of the vote.2
In Singapore you have a one-party system. You have several parties, but it’s all artificial.
– Somsanouk Mixay, editor of the Vientiane Times, a state-controlled newspaper in communist Laos, discussing south-east Asian politics.3
The fact that the political parties are not functioning does not mean that people are not politicking. People do not stop breathing just because you shut the windows.
– Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Indonesian political analyst.4
Elections in Singapore and Indonesia are very different affairs, but for decades they had the same outcome: the government won.
The 1997 election across Indonesia’s sprawling archipelago was both colourful and violent. President Suharto’s children joined the election campaign, officially labelled a ‘festival of democracy’ complete with parades and musical entertainment, on the side of the ruling Golkar party. His son Bambang Trihatmodjo, a wealthy businessman, appeared on stage with a popular singer who belted out catchy numbers such as ‘Golkar, my sweetheart’. Throughout the country, the rival parties dressed up lampposts, vehicles and supporters in their party colours; in the remote eastern territory of Irian Jaya, tribesmen were persuaded to swap their traditional brown penis sheaths for new ones
