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Why should our young care about Asian values?
Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew still gets quizzed on it. Western journalists keep gloating about it. Singapore intellectuals are still talking about it. Why should Asian values matter to the cosmopolitan young in an age of globalisation? IRENE NG finds out.
MISS CHANG Li Lin, 28, is Asian. So, when some Singapore intellectuals speak about Asian values, you might expect her to nod sagely and think: Ah, they are talking about my values!
Not quite. Instead her mind flashes to the banners in Indonesia and Malaysia proclaiming "Reformasi!", and calls to stamp out corruption, cronyism and nepotism (KKN to the Indonesians), as well as to uphold individual rights.
A case of Asian values under siege?
Then her mind races to Singapore. There is negligible "KKN" among public officials here. But pressure for greater freedom of speech seems to be in the air.
A case of Asian values in retreat?
Hang on. What exactly are Asian values? How do young Singaporeans like Miss Chang keep the good values and throw out the bad ones? Should the emphasis be on universal values rather than Asian ones?
These are her thoughts as she wrestles with the on-off-on "Asian values" debate and wonders what it has to do with life in an increasingly cosmopolitan city. The research associate, was among the 270 academics, professionals and corporate leaders at the annual conference of the Institute of Policy Studies recently. The topic was "Asian values: Asian miracle or Asian mirage?".
To many, Professor Tommy Koh, the affable ambassador-at-large who chaired the seminar, epitomises the cosmopolitan Singaporean who also takes on the mantle of stout defender of Asian values.
At the conference, he makes it clear that "KKN" are not Asian values or practices, and that "some of East Asia's political leaders have given Asian values a bad name by seeking to justify their abuses of power and the inequities of their societies in the name of Asian values".
Exploring the issue from various sociological, political or cultural vantage points are the four speakers -- Professor Wang Gungwu, director of the East Asian Institute; Dr Kwok Kian-Woon, assistant professor with the department of sociology, National University of Singapore; Dr Ho Kong Chong, deputy director of the NUS Centre For Advanced Studies, and Mr Chong Wing Hong, leader writer with Lianhe Zaobao.
If there is any conclusion that Miss Chang draws from the closed-door discussions, it is that there is no consensus among Asian intellectuals on the concept of Asian values.
Not only is the term elusive, it has also proved to be impressively elastic. It can be stretched to cover anything and everything from Confucianistic tenets to repressive regimes to strict film censorship.
Going back to the genesis of the debate, Singapore's prominent role can be traced to an interview with Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew by the international journal Foreign Affairs in 1994.
It came on the heels of a 1993 report by the World Bank on the spectacular growth of eight East Asian economies, titled "The East Asian economic miracle: Economic growth and public policy".
Mr Lee was asked if there was an "Asian model" for political and economic development.
His reply: "I don't think there is an Asian model as such. But Asian societies are unlike Western ones."
He referred to the underlying concept binding Korea, Japan, China and Vietnam, in which the individual exists in the context of his family.
"The family is part of the extended family, and then friends and the wider society."
He summed up Singapore's basic values as: "The belief in thrift, hard work, filial piety and loyalty in the extended family, and most of all, the respect for scholarship and learning".
At their core, these are Confucianist values. Mr Lee had not lumped them into the soundbite "Asian values". That was the Western media's contribution. The label is convenient and catchy, and it stuck.
The debate has since taken on a life of its own, hijacked by Western liberals and diverse Asian voices giving their own spins to the phrase. What clouded the issue even further was the onset of the Asian financial crisis, which many Western analysts saw as marking the end of the ideological challenge from East Asia.
An interesting irony is that, while there have always been contrarian voices by communitarian thinkers on Western values in the West, no one has doubted if there is such a thing as Western values.
The dominant values in the West today can be said to place individual human rights as supreme, and Western-style liberal democracy as the most desirable form of political organisation.
Taking the argument further, many Western liberals have held these to be universal values.
This view is challenged rigorously by the "Singapore school", represented by Mr Lee, Prof Koh and diplomat Kishore Mahbubani.
The Singapore school argues that the Western democratic system is not universal, but would have to be adapted to suit the social, economic and cultural contexts of the societies in which it is to be applied.
Predictably, this view was met by negative reactions.
Expressing puzzlement at the IPS conference, Prof Koh says: "Asians do not react negatively when Americans profess their belief in American values and ideals, or Europeans in theirs. Why does the West react in such a negative way when Asians profess their belief in Asian values?"
One reason, he argues, is that the West has not yet come to accept Asia as an equal, and that its mindset -- that East Asia does not represent any positive values -- has not changed.
"I suspect that the West cannot accept the notion of Asian values because it would constitute a challenge to Western intellectual hegemony," he adds.
In the view of others, the debate has also converged with the uncertainties of post-Cold War strategic thinking and the rise of China.
Prof Wang observes that with the collapse of the dichotomy of capitalism and communism, the debate has filled the void with Asian values which are now in danger of becoming the abstract code for an"evil empire", to be resisted by Western white knights.
But why argue about the relevance of Asian values to either the East Asian miracle or its debacle?
Some contend that it is better to examine the relevance of Asian values, as propounded by the Singapore school, to the Republic's aspirations to be a global city and knowledge-based economy.
Speaking to Insight, Prof Wang notes that Singapore is located "where several of the major cultures intersect with Western culture under modern conditions".
"It would be important to learn how to handle the pressures of Western political culture, unless Singapore surrenders to being simply a modified version of London or New York with some local characteristics."
Mr Pratap Nambiar, regional director of business development with Ernst & Young International, feels that the shift towards a knowledge-based economy would require an increasing emphasis on creativity and innovation.
"This means a major change in the way we balance the factors of chaos versus conformity, individualism versus community."
As they see it, it is less than self-evident that the forces of modernisation must in all cases entail the rise of individualism and the disintegration of the communitarian and family-centred order.
In other words, modernisation need not be Westernisation.
Creativity and innovation, for instance, are not Western preserves. China, for example, has produced notable innovations, such as paper and the early ship-building technology.
Nor is the Western democratic model, as it has been pointed out, fail-safe in ensuring economic success, as a glance at some carbon copies in the region can attest.
That said, few will disagree that the most accessible model of a society that is committed to being knowledge-based, technological and creative today is that of the West, mainly the US and Western Europe.
Prof Wang says: "For English-speaking Singapore, the Anglo-American version of that model would be the easiest to follow. To do so efficiently and at full throttle could make the country something like an extension of the West in the heart of South-east Asia."
But is this what Singapore wants? Unlikely.
The professor believes that the main cultures here are "strong and self-conscious, vibrant if not militant", and would not succumb to the present dominant norms of the modern West where they can.
The question is how and to what extent they can transmit key values of their cultures to the next generation in the face of globalisation.
This is where education is expected to play an increasingly important role. But it will be an uphill task, acknowledges Mr Chong Wing Hong, Lianhe Zaobao leader writer.
In the information age, more and more values will come from the West. Their values are being promoted as universal values, and "will be regarded generally as 'universal' standards in the assessment of nations", he tells the conference.
He suggests that Singapore thinkers refocus their energies on the "universal elements in the Asian culture which can be shared by and enjoyed with the rest of mankind".
Certainly, the values debate is a long way from any resolution, and Singapore's thinkers will have to continue playing a big role in sustaining it intellectually.
Prof Koh stresses that people should not take a simplistic Asian-values-are
"On the contrary, Singaporeans should be critical of bad Asian values and practices. We should praise the good Western values and institutions which East Asia should adopt.
"While proud to be Asians and of our cultural heritage, we should be apostles of the cosmopolitan values and multiculturalism which are the hallmarks of Singapore," he says.
No doubt, this would present a tension which Singaporeans, especially the young MTV generation and their educators, would have to grapple with.
Not all, however, share this view.
One who attended the IPS conference, Mr Edward Quah, deputy principal of Singapore Polytechnic, tells Insight: "This area of Asian values is of little interest to me and I am not too thrilled by the attention that is being given to this debate."
Perhaps, one could not blame him entirely. As Prof Wang notes, the debate on Asian values offers neither obvious, immediate or measurable benefits nor clear and ready answers, unlike a debate on economic indicators.
But like it or not, this debate remains relevant to young Singapore as long as it wants to retain its distinctive Asian values, while imbibing the best of the West to progress economically.
The debate is relevant as long as the rise of Asia beckons. The economic crisis will pass. What will determine the civilisational debate will be decided in terms of centuries, not short economic cycles.
It is relevant as long as its people continue to respect their historical legacies and have no other meaningful, deep and abiding resources to draw from to secure an identity and status in the threatening globalised world.
And it is relevant as long as young Asians such as Ms Chang continue to agonise: "What values have we imbibed? Which should we discard and which should we emphasise more?"
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