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ОглавлениеPART I: WHY ASIA MATTERS
Asia is the largest continent, comprising a third of all dry land, and containing more than half the world’s population. Its importance is growing and will, I am sure, continue to grow. And that conviction has been reinforced by every one of the thirty-three visits I have made to thirteen Asian countries since leaving office.
Westerners have a habit of getting it wrong about Asia. Its distance, size and what I can only call ‘otherness’ intrigue, mystify and sometimes frighten us. We are inclined to exaggerate. Thus in the late 1980s and early 1990s there was much fevered talk about the twenty-first century being the ‘Asian’ or the ‘Asia Pacific’ century – an era in which the focus of world events and the centre of world power would radically shift from West to East. For example, the distinguished historian Paul Kennedy wrote in 1988 that ‘the task facing American statesmen over the next decade … is a need to manage affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States’ position takes place slowly and smoothly’.* At the same time, in response to Asian economic advance, Western protectionism found new and extremely sophisticated advocates – such as the late Sir James Goldsmith.† In the United States the call to resist the inroads of Asian economic power was taken up by former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan and others. In Europe a new impulse was given to federalism by those who envisaged a world of competing trade- and power-blocs, one or perhaps two of which would be Asian.
The subsequent crisis which affected most of the Far East’s ‘tiger’ economies and the continuing problems affecting the mighty economy of Japan put paid to some of that hyperbole and hysteria. Indeed, alongside alarm at the global economic implication of this contagious bout of Asian economic ’flu there could be detected a certain Schadenfreude: many Westerners felt that Asia’s problems vindicated their own system and outlook.
But simply because the rhetoric about an Asian century was exaggerated does not mean that Asia’s advance has been halted. Indeed, the underlying realities all confirm that Asia matters – and it matters to the West. To see that this is so we need only consider the following.
First, Asia’s population (as a whole) is growing while the West’s (as a whole) is stagnating. By the year 2050, it is projected that Asia’s population will increase to 5.2 billion out of a total global population of 8.9 billion.* Asian countries have pursued policies to try to limit population growth with varying success and with varying degrees of coercion, and will doubtless continue to do so. But in a global economy with mobile capital and technology, and given the right framework of laws and regulation, large populations mean large workforces and growing markets. Expanding Asian nations will be increasingly important for us, both as customers and as competitors.
Second, Asia contains three – and possibly four – emerging powers on whose fortunes and intentions much depends. China, a major regional power with vast economic potential and uncertain ambitions, represents an increasingly important global player in the greatest game. Japan, still the world’s second largest economy, is deciding how in the long term it intends to protect and project its strategic interests. India, like China a vast country of more than a billion people, is the world’s largest democracy and now an established nuclear power. Indonesia, for all its continuing traumas, is the world’s largest Muslim state: its direction will have a significant impact on Islam as a political force.
Third, although generalisation inevitably means oversimplification, Asian – particularly East Asian – values, habits and attitudes will have a continuing and increasing impact on us in various ways. Asian immigration to the West is the most obvious of these. But, most important, Asian cultural distinctness will be crucial in shaping the economic and political development of the Asian states with which we have to deal.
‘Asian values’ are, needless to say, a thorny subject. Westerners have over the years created images and stereotypes that caricatured and offended Asians. One Asian commentator has, for example, recently argued that ‘the most painful thing that happened to Asia was not the physical but the mental colonisation’, adding that ‘this mental colonisation has not been completely eradicated in Asia, and many Asian societies are still struggling to break free of it’.*
But the recent proponents of the notion that Asians are different – and that this explains why their economies and societies are more successful – have themselves been Asians. For example, Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, has stated: ‘We [Asians] have different social values. These different values have made for fast growth.’† Again, according to Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, ‘Asian values are actually universal values and Western people used to practise the same values.’‡
We ought to ignore the element of special pleading in all this. ‘Asian values’ do not provide an excuse for abuses of human rights. One would hope that the unacceptable treatment of the Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has silenced all but the most shameless proponents of Asian autocracy as a legitimate alternative. But the importance of culture as a component of economic success and as an influence on social and political institutions is a reality nonetheless.
Well-known characteristic features of Asian – particularly East Asian – societies that are important here are the strength of family ties, a sense of responsibility and the disposition to save and to act with prudence. As Francis Fukuyama has pointed out:
Many modern Asian societies have followed a completely different evolutionary path from Europe and North America. Beginning approximately in the mid-1960s, virtually every country in the industrialised West experienced a rapid increase in crime rates and a breakdown in the nuclear family. The only two countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development not experiencing this disruption were the Asian ones, Japan and Korea … similarly with the countries of South-East Asia.*
A number of Asian countries have drawn on these social characteristics to create successful economies, keeping the size and cost of government down by limiting welfare spending and excessive regulation. These policies, which minimise welfare dependency, should in turn reinforce the social and cultural values which have helped Asian economies to flourish.
I believe that this will remain particularly true of countries that have a majority or a significant minority of Chinese. Wherever they go, even when they are living under the ramshackle quasisocialism of mainland China, they show the same qualities of enterprise and self-reliance.† And given the right economic framework, nothing is beyond them. Just consider Singapore.
PART II: THE TIGERS
SINGAPORE – A MAN-MADE MIRACLE
It is often the case that large truths are best elicited through miniatures. And in the case of South-East Asia that immediately leads us to focus on the remarkable reality of tiny Singapore.
Singapore is one of the world’s smallest states, less than 250 square miles, consisting of one island and fifty-nine islets. It has naturally poor soil, lacks significant mineral resources, and it even has to bring in its water. Yet today it is one of the most commercially vibrant places on earth. It is the world’s busiest port. Although it has to import all its raw materials, it is a major manufacturing centre – chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electronics, clothing, plastics, refined petroleum and petroleum products. Between 1966 and 1990 its economy grew by an average of 8.5 per cent. In short, Singapore is the hub of South-East Asia, itself one of the world’s most dynamic economic regions. And Singapore’s population of four million now enjoys an income per head higher than that of the United Kingdom, Germany or France.
Singapore, as we see it today, can be said to have had two founders. The first was the British colonial administrator Sir Thomas Raffles, who established the city in 1819 as a trading centre, uniquely placed at the passage between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The British East India Company subsequently developed and exploited the port. Under British rule, the present population of immigrants of Chinese, Malay and Indian extraction grew up, with the Chinese in an increasing majority. The British did not exactly enhance their reputation in Singapore during the Second World War. But by the time we left, we had provided the inhabitants with the precious legacy of a rule of law, honest administration and a spirit of ethnic tolerance.
