societies by emulating the commercial, administrative and social practices of the colonial powers with which they came into contact; King Chulalongkorn of Thailand, for example, is credited with turning his country into a modern bureaucratic state, complete with railways, roads and canals, during his rule from 1868 to 1910.
But in the 1980s and 1990s Asian leaders, especially in south-east Asia, decided to turn the tables on the West. Independence from the European powers had been won three decades before, and had been followed by a period of rapid economic growth in much of east Asia. Men like Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore declared that Asia was indeed different from the West. But this time it was the Asians who were disciplined, hardworking and moral, while the West was a place of unreason – a morass of crime, decadence and loose sexual habits. By the early 1990s a lively debate was under way in east Asia and among politicians and academics in the US and Europe.3
Supporters of the concept of ‘Asian values’ argued that east Asians, although ethnically diverse, shared certain core beliefs. They were loyal to their families and communities, whereas westerners were obsessed with the rights of individuals to the extent that their societies were starting to fall apart. Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of modern Singapore, its prime minister from 1959 to 1990 and now with the title of senior minister, told an interviewer in 1994 that he liked the informality and openness of American society. ‘But as a total system, I find parts of it totally unacceptable: guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy, unbecoming behaviour in public – in sum the breakdown of civil society,’ he said. ‘The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society. In the East the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.’4
The philosophy of ‘Asian values’, developed principally in Singapore and Malaysia, is much more than a set of abstruse social theories. From Burma to China and beyond, it has a direct bearing on everything from attitudes towards human rights abuses and film censorship to international trade negotiations and deforestation. After three decades of political stability and extraordinarily rapid economic expansion, some of Asia’s leaders feel that they have earned the right to run their countries according to their own rules. They have had enough of being lectured on how to run their political systems, look after the rights of their factory workers and protect their tigers and elephants by former colonial powers such as England and France, and by a United States made arrogant by its victory over communism in the Cold War. The coming century, they believe, will be the ‘Pacific Century’ – an era in which confident Asians will finally be able to discard the western baggage left behind by the colonial era.
Such emotions are most deeply felt by the older generation of leaders who remember colonial rule and who still hold sway in much of the region. Mahathir, the septuagenarian Malaysian prime minister who has led the country since 1981, has courted Japan in his efforts to advance the cause of ‘Asian values’, both because of Japan’s present influence as an economic superpower and because of its historical role in sweeping aside the colonial powers in south-east Asia during the Second World War. Although the British, the French and the Dutch returned after Japan’s defeat in 1945, the mystique of the all-powerful European was shattered for ever, and they soon departed again, leaving behind the newly independent countries of Asia.5 The forthright Mahathir has found favour in Japan by urging the Japanese to stop apologizing for the war and to take pride in the resurgent Asia of the late twentieth century. In 1995 he co-authored The Asia that can say No: a Card against the West with the right-wing Japanese politician Shintaro Ishihara, and in it he laid out the basic tenets of the new Asian philosophy: the West is suffering from ‘moral degeneration’ and hedonism in the form of incest, cohabitation, sensual gratification, avarice and lack of respect for family or religion; Asia is in the ascendant economically and morally; and the jealous West is therefore trying to stifle Asia’s growth. ‘Fearing that one day they will have to face Asian countries as competitors, some western nations are doing their utmost to keep us at bay,’ he wrote. ‘They constantly wag accusing fingers in Asia’s direction, claiming that it has benefited from unacceptable practices, such as denial of human rights and workers’ rights, undemocratic government, and disregard for the environment.’ For Mahathir, Asian values were not just different, they were better. The West ‘should accept our values, not the other way round’. Ishihara joined in with enthusiasm along similarly anti-western and anti-liberal lines. Among other declarations, he made the controversial assertion that westerners sought depraved sex and child sex in south-east Asia while Japanese visitors just wanted normal sex with prostitutes. More significantly, he aired the idea of ‘a new economic co-prosperity sphere’ for Asia, echoing the wartime Japanese concept of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ which justified Japan’s invasion of other Asian lands.6
All this harked back to Japanese Second World War propaganda about undesirable Anglo-American values – individualism, liberalism, democracy, hedonism and materialism – that should not be allowed to pollute the pure spirit of Japan.7 But the memories of Japanese atrocities against both prisoners-of-war and civilians meant that a new ‘Asian Way’ so closely associated with Japan was never going to be popular in south-east Asia, let alone China. Mahathir said the Japanese troops in Malaya had done nothing ‘improper’, but other Asians of his generation – including Filipinos and Chinese – remember all too well the gruesome massacres, rapes, torture and other atrocities committed by Japanese troops. Lee Kuan Yew has repeatedly mentioned the dark days of the Japanese occupation of Singapore and used it to warn his people of the need for constant vigilance. The idea of an ‘Asian Way’ for the 1990s with Japan taking the lead was further impeded by the reluctance of Japanese politicians more cautious than the swashbuckling Ishihara to antagonize their American allies.
Another way for east Asian leaders to cement ‘Asian values’ into a coherent philosophy was to summon the help of Confucius. The Chinese sage, who lived 2,500 years ago and whose thoughts on government and morality are recorded in The Analects, at first seemed ideally suited to the task of uniting east Asians behind a common value-system. Like modern east Asians, he revered the power of education and preached filial piety. As early as 1977, the University of Singapore hosted a symposium on Asian Values and Modernization. Academics bemoaned the rise of juvenile delinquency and the increasing divorce rate and suggested that western values should be inspected – as if by customs officials – before being imported. They discussed the need to build an ethos based on supposedly Asian values such as ‘group solidarity’, ‘community life’ and the belief in extended families.8 By 1983, Singapore had established the Institute of East Asian Philosophies. Sponsored by Lee’s ruling People’s Action Party, it was designed to revive Confucianism and adapt it to modern life, and was explicitly aimed at countering the westernization of Singaporeans. A new theory of government based on harmony and consensus was outlined: debate and criticism would not take place in public but among members of the government behind closed doors. As one western academic put it in 1996, in Indonesia and Singapore ‘consensus means conformity with the wishes of the regime’.9
The appeal of Confucian conservatism is understandable, particularly in societies with pre-existing Confucian traditions such as Vietnam and among the minority ethnic Chinese communities widely spread throughout south-east Asia. At a time of tumultuous social and political change, Confucianism seems to offer clear guidelines for maintaining civilized values. ‘Criminality is on the rise, opium and drugs are on the rise too and morality is in decline – such things as would make the hair of the ancestors stand on end,’ says Huu Ngoc, a Vietnamese writer living in the capital Hanoi. For him, the chaos caused by modernization is damaging a community spirit based on the co-operative cultivation of rice – a spirit which he sees as spreading out in concentric circles from family to village to nation. The result, he says,