Page 1 of 3 The search for an Asian face
By Chietigj Bajpaee
As the world marks 10 years since the Asian financial crisis, an issue that is
lost in the debates over exchange-rate systems, capital controls and corporate
governance is the political fallout from the crisis, namely the death of the
"Asian values" debate.
However, the discussion over an Asian community is re-emerging as Asia regains
its self-confidence and reasserts itself on the international stage. The focal
point of the current debate has
shifted from the "Asian Tiger" economies of Southeast Asia in the 1990s to the
Dragon and the Elephant - China and India.
The previous debates failed as a result of Asia's ideological divisions and a
series of regional crises. However, Asia's economic re-emergence and the
region's growing interdependence in the economic, security and political arenas
are acting as a glue to forge a stronger Asian identity.
None of this denies the fact that "Asia" is a constructed identity. However,
the constructed nature of "Asian values" does not reduce their importance or
validity. The identities of most nation-states are based on constructed or
"imagined" identities, as Cornell University Professor Emeritus Benedict
Anderson refers to them, where the elite or ruling class use symbols such as
flags, anthems and a sense of shared history and the technologies of the day,
such as the printing press, to forge a national identity. In the present day,
cross-border travel and trade, the Internet and popular culture play the same
role in forging a regional identity.
Politicians and policymakers have used the concept of an Asian community or
identity for cementing national identity, as is the case with Singapore and
Malaysia, which espouse Asian identity and values to hold together their
multicultural states. States have also relied on the concept of Asian values to
project power, as seen with Japan projecting itself as the model for the Asian
economic miracle, China projecting itself as the home of Confucian values given
the declining legitimacy of communism, and India projecting itself as the home
of Buddhism as part of its "Look East" policy.
Asia is not a static, monolithic region that is mutually exclusive from other
cultures and civilizations. Multiple identities, civilizations and value
systems occupy the same space, as shown by the fact that Asia is a politically,
culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse region.
However, Asia's heterogeneity does not undermine its regional identity.
Numerous nations and supranational states such as India, the United States and
the European Union comprise diverse groups. Nonetheless, a common history from
the struggle against colonialism, coupled with growing economic
interdependence, shared security concerns and political cooperation fueled by
the growth of a plethora of inclusive regional forums are helping to forge an
Asian identity.
The evolution of an Asian community
The concept of an Asian community or identity has undergone numerous
transformations. Trade links in Asia stretch back two millennia to when Chinese
silk and porcelain were traded for Indian cotton and Southeast Asian spices and
wood products along the Silk Road and Southeast Asia's sea-lanes, with major
ports emerging in Calicut in South Asia, Melaka in Southeast Asia, and
Guangzhou in China.
Meanwhile, cultural and religious bonds date back to Indian Emperor Asoka's
spread of Buddhism beyond the subcontinent in the 3rd century BCE and Melaka
emerging as a center for the practice of tolerant Sufi Islam in Asia in the
13th century.
The first attempt at a pan-Asian political identity arose with Imperial China's
"tribute" system, which distinguished the non-Asian "barbarians" from the Asian
tributary states, which included Korea, Japan, and numerous kingdoms in
Southeast Asia. Swaths of Asia were also under the rule of the Mongol Yuan
Dynasty (1271-1368).
Western colonial rule over Asia from the 18th century curtailed interaction
among Asian states as many regions ceased to be independent political actors
and colonial-era rivalries led to the creation of buffer states. Imperial Japan
also used the concept of an Asian identity to justify its "liberation" of Asian
states from Western colonial rule under its model of the "Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere".
Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesian president Sukarno and
Chinese premier Zhou Enlai took the helm of the Asian identity debate at the
Asian Relations Conference in 1947 by combining Asia's struggle against Western
imperialism and decolonization with the struggles of Africa and Latin America
to forge the "Bandung spirit" of 1955, which became the precursor for the
Non-Aligned Movement and the Asia-Africa Summit.
The spirit of Asian brotherhood was most visibly manifested over the slogan of "Hindi-Chin
bhai bhai" (Indians and Chinese are brothers), which attempted to forge
a familial bond between Asia's two oldest civilizations, and Panchsheel, or the
Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, which formed the basis for
Sino-Indian relations and China's and India's relations with other countries.
Prime minister Nehru was especially vocal in his support of an Asian identity,
as evinced by his support for China during the Korean War and for mainland
China's claim to a seat at the United Nations. Nehru also expressed pride in
Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and even opposed punishing
Japan at the post-World War II Tokyo trials, based on his view of Japan as
Asian brethren. However, this phase of Asian solidarity perished as China and
India went to war in 1962 and the regional architecture divided along the Cold
War divide with the formation of organizations such as the anti-communist
US-led Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
The most recent manifestation of Asian regionalism emerged in the 1990s with
the rise of Asia's four tiger economies, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and
Taiwan.
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and Singaporean prime minister Lee
Kuan Yew led this round of the debate with the view that the ability of their
countries to move from agrarian developing economies to newly industrialized
countries within a single generation was a sign of their superior economic and
political model, based on a Confucian work ethic, filial piety and a
patriarchal society, and the importance of social freedom over individual
freedom, which translated into Asia "getting the fundamentals right" with high
savings rates and high-quality education, export-led development and a
political model of soft authoritarianism or "guided democracy".
At the state-to-state level, this translated into espousing mutual respect,
territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in
internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, which was codified in the Five
Principles of Peaceful Co-existence and the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations' Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which subsequently came to be known
as the "ASEAN way".
The 1997 Asian financial crisis and the SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome) epidemic exposed the flaws of Asian values. The need to "save face"
led to a lack of transparency over the spread of SARS. The crony capitalism
within Japan's keiretsu, South Korea's chaebol, and Indonesia's konglomerats
fueled the "contagion" effect across the region during the Asian crisis.
Finally, the lack of accountability of the region's non-democratic regimes led
to political upheaval in numerous states, from the fall of the Suharto regime
in Indonesia to the arrest and imprisonment of deputy prime minister Anwar
Ibrahim in Malaysia, and leadership changes in South Korea and Thailand.
China and India, engines of integration
However, the Asian financial crisis also heralded a new phase of the
Asian-values debate as China came to the rescue of the region. The fact that
China was insulated from the crisis by its relatively closed capital market and
acted as a "firewall" for the contagion by not devaluing its currency
demonstrated its emergence as a responsible player in the region.
China's centrality to the emerging Asian order is being reinforced by its
leadership role in numerous regional multilateral forums
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
