by Denis Kim, SJ
Context: Asia in Development
It is a difficult task to describe the quality of democracy in Asia Pacific. A complexity is that Asia-Pacific has many interesting and diverse cases: communist (North Korea), post-socialist (China and Vietnam), post-civil war society (Cambodia), military dictatorship (Myanmar), liberal democracy (Australia). Many countries, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan can be either categorized as illiberal or situated somewhere between liberal and illiberal democracy.[1] In terms of the UN Human Development Index 2011, Japan is ranked as the 12th, Hong Kong as the 13th, South Korea as the 15th, and Singapore as the 26th, followed by Malaysia the 62nd, among the all countries in the world.[2] Most other countries, however, are ranked outside the 100th. In terms of corruption and transparency, similarly, only a few countries receive high rank: Singapore as the 5th, Hong Kong as the 12th, Japan as the 14th, Taiwan the 32nd, followed by South Korea as the 43rd.[3] Therefore, it is well-known that most Asian countries are low in terms of the quality of democracy and its poor governance. Even some countries are notorious for their brutal human rights violations.
Beyond the index, the historical change in the political and economic context of the region is more enlightening. Despite the differences in culture, language, history, and ethnicity, in addition to its geographical arbitrariness, East and Southeast Asia can be understood economically. It has been the fastest growing region in the world since 1965. Its economic growth has commonly been described in terms of a ‘flying geese pattern of economic development’.[4] Japan has taken the lead, followed by the ‘four tiger’ economies (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), then the ‘little tigers’ of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand), and finally by the post-communist economies (China and Vietnam). To a lesser extent, Myanmar and North Korea are now expected to follow this pattern. The recent “liberalization” of Myanmar can be interpreted in this line. North Korea is reported to endeavour to imitate the Thai model in which both political kingship and economic development are simultaneously pursued.
Given the context of political diversity as well as the significance of economic development in the region, this article focuses on democracy issues of the “tiger” countries. The rationale for this focus is that many East and Southeast Asian countries belong to this category. Moreover, their politico-economic pattern is anticipated to be more accepted as an “Asian” model alternative to the Western one, grounded in market economy, liberal democracy, and human rights norms. The rise of China seems not only to confirm this alternative model but also to reinforce its diffusion. Interestingly, however, under the influence of enculturation discourse, the Church’s mission has paid attention to the religious-cultural context rather than that of political economy. This article aims to fill the gap by examining the politico-economic context and its implication for the Church’s social mission. It begins to examine the political economy of development, followed by the debate of the Asian democracy. Finally, it ends with its implication on the role of the Church in the region.
Developmental State or Developmental Authoritarianism
In the development of East and Southeast Asia, two characteristics deserve attention in relation to the quality of democracy. One is the role of cheap labour; and the other, the role of the state. Economic development has been mainly driven by labour intensive industrialization. Due to the increasing labour costs of the lead goose, older, more labour-intensive technologies were transferred down from the leader countries to follower ones where cheap labour could be found. This began with Japan transferring technologies to Southeast Asian countries, followed by the four tiger countries doing so. The rise of China is also largely indebted to its industrialization based on cheap and flexible labour, about which one might get a glimpse in the recent New York Times’ article on the Apple’s iPad production.[5]
On the other hand, the role of the state is significant in this labour situation. It differs both from that of the small government in liberalism and from that of the executive committee for the whole bourgeoisie in Marxism. It has played an active role of entrepreneur by planning, moderating the private sectors, and even running the business sectors directly. It also has assisted the TNCs (transnational companies) not only by providing the free-trade zones and tax benefits, but also by controlling labour rights and wage in order for the TNCS to secure cheap labour. Again the New York Times’ article illustrates how Apple has benefited through the exploitive use of labourers in China. The role of the state in East and Southeast Asian countries has received ambivalent evaluations. Surely, the state-driven industrialization has contributed to delivering the country out of poverty. However, it was accomplished by authoritarian regimes who disciplined labourers with carrots and sticks. Such regimes include not only post-socialist China but also the four tigers. Those who emphasize the former aspect, entrepreneurship, call these Asian states a “developmental state”; however, those who stress the latter, authoritarianism, name these states “developmental authoritarianism.”
The ambivalent evaluation sets the background for the well-known controversies on the “Asian values” and the universality of human rights. Before this article shall examine them, it is noteworthy that the following shadows of the rapid economic development are commonly pointed out in the region: the reservation of human and labour rights, the development of efficiency-driven bureaucracy, the superiority of the state over civil society, environmental degradation, etc. Industrialization has also resulted in the increase of inequality between its beneficiaries and those who are excluded from its benefits, for instance, between the emergent middle class and the working class, and between those regularly employed and those irregularly employed. The dynamic relationship between the two unequal sides has influenced the political landscape, and thereby the quality of democracy in the region.
Western Democracy or Asian Democracy
The East and Southeast Asia region constituted a significant part of the wave of democratization in the 1980s, together with the fall of communist countries. Countries from the Philippines and South Korea to Thailand and Taiwan became democratized by peoples’ power, and optimism prevailed that the authoritarian regimes would fade away in this wave. However, in the early 1990s, the so-called “Asian values,” in particular, vocally raised by then Singaporean and Malaysian Prime Ministers, challenged the Western liberal democracy. They advocated for an authoritarian discipline, presenting the “Asian values” as a cultural backbone in which hard work, frugality, discipline and teamwork can be generated. Soon, however, the 1997 Asian economic crisis blew up the triumphant presentation of the “Asian values”. They, once acclaimed as an engine for the Asian development, are now identified as a source of crony capitalism used to justify the absence of democratic checks and balances. Nevertheless, partly due to the rise of China and partly to the frustration of economic insecurity following upon de-regulation policy, people observe recently the resurgence of the “Asian values” and the spread of nostalgia for overthrown dictators, and a softening of the memories of autocratic rule among the middle class. In this context, a few years ago, Time, an American magazine, reported “Asia’s Dithering Democracies” in its New Year edition.[6]
Western observers point out several areas in which the Asian countries need to deepen democracy.
· Political culture: Citizens should cultivate their citizenship, differing from subjects or clients who depend on their ruler or patrons.[7]
· Institutions to check and balance power: Society should develop its independent institutions, such as media and court, which can check power.
· Political society: Political parties should represent the diverse interests and are able to mediate people with the state.
· Civil Society: Especially, public sphere should be independent from the state’s control and needs to be strengthened
These observations are based on the Western liberal democracy model. Those who believe that the Western model is not universal argue for Asian democracy. There is no definite consensus on the Asian values or a model of Asian democracy. However, it tends to stress the following aspects:
· social harmony and consensus over confrontation and dissent
· socio-economic well-being instead of liberal and political human rights
· welfare and collective well-being of the community over individual rights.
Sometimes it is presented as Asian communitarians over individualism and liberalism, together with the emphasis on nation or state over individuals. Therefore, it is no surprise that authoritarian regimes in Asia have used similar logic in order to justify their authoritarian exercise of power and repress political dissent. Moreover, this logic has been employed in the human rights controversy with regard to China, contending that human rights norms are a Western moral weapon to tame Asia by imposing their standard on Asia.
Despite cultural or political logic, the claim for the Asian mode of democracy can be made on the ground of the Asian state’s performance in development. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father who built the modern affluent Singapore out of the de-colonized small city country with no natural resources, is bold to argue for Asian values. While constructing Singaporean capitalist development, he used to compare socialist with capitalist regimes. However, since the 1990s, he assesses countries by contrasting those possessing Asian values with those that do not. Invited to Manila where democratization took place in 1986 but the economy still suffered, He asserted “Contrary to what American commentators say, I do not believe that democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe that what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy. The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development” In his view, the Philippines is handicapped both by its “American-style constitution,” which undermines social discipline and stability, and by its “lack” of Asian values. These two factors account for the country being less successful than other developing Asian countries. “The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of people, plus enabling the maximum of personal freedoms compatible with the freedoms of other in society.”[8]
Lee’s assertion on Asian values has not only met Western criticism, but also Asian critiques as well. Above all, another Asian leader, Kim Dae Jung, later Nobel Peace prize winner and President of South Korea, refuted these advocators of the “Asian Values.” He argues that Asian cultural traditions support not only economic development, widely argued in the Confucian work ethics, but also political democratization, by pointing out in Mencius the people’s right to overthrow a tyrant. This reveals the diverse interpretations of the so-called Asian traditions.
The debates on the “Asian values” manifest several layers in the changing landscape of East and Southeast Asia. Above all, Lee and Kim represent top Asian political leaders. Lee has built Singapore, and it makes him credible. In contrast, Kim, as a political dissident, fought against Dictator Park with whom Lee shared similar political philosophy and style. Lee himself explicitly admired Park as the modernizer of Korea in his autobiography. The difference between Lee and Kim, thus, is natural. Successfully presenting himself as a democracy advocator, Kim finally won the Nobel Peace Prize after the summit conference between North and South Korea. In this sense, the debates on the “Asian values” have been rather politically constructed and presented by politicians’ raiding the rich storehouse of Asian cultural and religious traditions. The differences internal to Asia and their dialogical and dialectical development within Confucianism, Buddhism, or Islam have been ignored or merely selectively emphasized.
The Asian value debates reveal not only pride in what Asian countries have accomplished, but also a claim to superiority, at least in culture and morality, if not yet in economy, over the West, the former colonizers. Their advocates commonly point to the shadows that reveal the limits of Western modernity, such as racism, excessive individualism, rising crime and divorce rates. However, it is misleading to interpret the debate on the Asian values in the binary frame of “Asian” versus “Western” democracy. Samuel Huntington, a former Harvard political scientist, suffers this pitfall when arguing for the “clash of civilization.” His thesis essentializes the Orient as the symbolic opposite of the West and overlooks the political-economic structure that supports the difference and difficulties. In doing so, both the Asian value advocates and Huntington orientalize Asian traditions as timeless and irrefutably embodied in all Asians.
Rather than the civilizational difference, the Asian value debates can be better understood, as Aihwa Ong, a Berkeley anthropologist, points out, as the “legitimization for state strategies aimed at strengthening controls at home and at stiffening bargaining postures in the global economy.”[9]In other words, the difference between East and West can be better understood in the context of neoliberal globalization. Whereas American neoliberalism undermines democratic principles of social equality by excessively privileging individual rights, the dominant Asian strategy in the global market undermines democracy by limiting individual political expression by excessively privileging collectivist security. The recent nostalgia for authoritarian leaders illustrates that the emergent middle class, the main beneficiaries of economic development in these tiger countries, demands better government not so much in terms of democratic representation as in terms of the state’s efficiency in ensuring overall social security and prosperity.
Nation-State and Migration
The state-led development and its success have shaped the move of people. After decades of economic development, the leading economic powers in East and Southeast Asia, such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, have become target countries for immigrants, and thus the international migration has rapidly increased within the region. Obviously, the typical causes of international migration between the North and the South, such as the difference in economic structures, life expectancy, demography, social conditions and political stability, can also partly explain this regional migration.
The characteristics of state-led development, however, illustrate a different pattern of social exclusion from Western immigration countries. In terms of ethnicity and race, except Singapore and Malaysia, the receiving countries in the region are highly ethnically homogenous: 98% Koreans in Korea, 98.5% Japanese in Japan, 91.5% of Han Chinese in China, and 98% Han Chinese in Taiwan. It is not surprising that the citizenship law is based on ius sanguinis and that foreigners are not treated as equal. In other words, the fault line between ‘us and them’ is easily drawn in blood lines. It partly explains the nationalistic culture in these countries. State is conceived as an extension of family, and nation is a state. Therefore, foreign people easily become subjects the state pays attention to, takes “care” for and controls for the state’s agenda, which is usually interpreted as the national agenda. It is a consequence of a state which not only has orchestrated the economy but also has organized the whole society for economic development. Furthermore, these countries are proud of being a mono-ethnic country, and ethnic minorities have been easily ignored in the name of the national good. Korean descendants in Japan and Chinese descendants in Korea have long been discriminated against and marginalized.
In summary, focusing on the tiger economies in the region, this article has addressed economic development, in which the state has played a crucial role, as the main common characteristic of the region. The promotion of authoritarian leadership or Asian democracy manifests not only their pride in their accomplishment, but also their mode of social regulation, which can ensure continuing economic development while minimizing socio-political cost. Obviously, as stated earlier, these characteristics are different from North Korea, Myanmar or some other countries. However, the rise of China is anticipated to affirm and reinforce the diffusion of state-led development, together with its social regulation, in the region.
Toward the Church’s Social Mission
The political, economic context of East and Southeast Asia charges the Church to rethink its social mission. The reception and creative appropriation of the CST(Catholic Social Teaching) seem to vary among the local churches. Two factors, one internal and one external, may explain the variance of their reception. Internally, the “inculturation” discourse has led the church to focus on culture or religion. In spite of the importance of sensitivity to local culture, emphasized since Vatican II, however, the efforts toward inculturation have not been free from the danger of essentializing culture in a dualistic way, such as the civilizational discourse does. Some inculturation discourse assumes the so-called modern, Western, capitalistic culture to be bad whereas local culture is romanticized as a source of identity-giving. However, the West “is now everywhere, within the West and outside: in structures and minds.”[10] In practice, there is no pure local culture untouched by Western modernity. Inculturation can be void if it lacks analysis of political and economic context and the appropriate response to this context. Externally, the church is a minor religion[11] in a society where the state is a strong regulator. Thus, it has often been considered risky for the church to engage in public issues. This has resulted in the Church’s social mission being easily confined within the religious and spiritual realm and within the boundary of the pre-existing nexus between state and society, rather than implementing the CST challenges.
It is ironic, however, that the churches socially engaged for the common good have been more successful at gaining conversions in Asia. The fastest growing churches for the past half century in the region are those in Timor Leste and South Korea. In Timor Leste, the Catholic population has grown from about 25% in 1975 to 98% in 2005, whereas its counterpart in Korea has grown from about 3% in 1960 to 10.1% in 2010, an exceptional phenomenon in Asia. Despite the difference in the historical context and the social location of the churches, the common characteristic of the Catholic Church in both countries lies in its contribution to the historical task in their countries. The task for the former was decolonization from Indonesia; the latter, democratization. The former Bishops Belo in Dili, Timor Leste, and Cardinal Kim in Seoul, South Korea, responded to this historical task with the spirit of the Gospel and Vatican II despite high risk. Due to the leadership in and contribution to these historical tasks each has been counted as one of the most respected persons in their respective countries. As a result, the Catholic Church in both countries has enjoyed moral authority, perhaps a more important quality to any religion than political and economic resources. More importantly, although people know its Western origin, the Church is no longer perceived as a foreign religion. The transformation of its perception has taken place in both countries, because the Church has taken a significant part in their historical change. A true inculturation!
The Church in the region can learn the lesson from the historical experience of Timor Leste and South Korea. It is the Church’s contribution to the historical task of the larger society. Cardinal Kim asserted that the raison d’être of Church is not for its own sake, but for the good of the larger society and strove for its implementation in spite of internal and external opposition. Especially in a society where the state tries to domesticate society and present itself as an agent of national good, the role of the Church becomes more significant and has more potential. It should define the common good in its own context, a context where the state usually defines the national good differently from the CST. In a globalized world, the Church as a transnational institution can find favourable space and resources more easily than before to counterbalance the state and build networks for the common good. Jesuits as members of a global religious order can make many paths to serve for the Church in Asia in defining the common good, making strategic plans for it, and mobilizing and connecting the people and resources so that they can be implemented.
[1]Cf. Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy”, Foreign Affairs, November/December 1997.
[2]http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/trends/
[3]http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international
[4] Kasahara S. (2004) “The Flying Geese Paradigm: A Critical study of Its Application to East Asian Regional Development,” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Discussion Paper # 169, April. Mitchell Bernard and John Ravenhill (1995). “Beyond Product Cycles and Flying Geese: Regionalization, Hierarchy, and the Industrialization of East Asia.” World Politics 47, pp 171-209.
[5]New York Times “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad” (Jan. 25, 2010) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?ref=applecomputerinc
[6]http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1869271,00.html#ixzz1kcaURiND
[7] Cf. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton Univ. Press, 1993).
[8]Far Eastern Economic Review, 10 December 1992. Quote from Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University) 1999, 71.
[9]Ong, op. cit., 11.
[10]Quote from A. Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) 224.
[11]In East and Southeast Asia, only the Philippines, Timor Leste, South Korea and Vietnam have Catholics more than 5% of its total population.