Thank you Chairman. It gives me a great pleasure to join the fifth meeting of the Asian Statesmen's Forum and to have reunion at this beautiful place of Cebu City. This time my wife insisted to join me and actually I am planning to have a summer vacation after this meeting with her. So I would like to appreciate Congressman Acosta and all who prepared this meeting again at this beautiful Plantation Bay Resort in Cebu island.


1. What is Asian Values ?

Today my task is to speak about Asian values and to revisit the meanings of the debate on Asian values in the context of Today's Asian politics, economy and society.

I guess discussions on Asian values began took place in the 1970's in Singapore. But the concept had little attention form Western world until mid 1990's when Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, explicitly advocated Asian culture against some Western culture. He stated the western idea of sacredness of individual has turned into creed and the exuberance of democracy leads to the undisciplined and disorderly conditions, which are characteristics of development. According to him, in sum, discipline is more crucial than democracy in terms of development. In that sense, I guess he sounded a little bit suspicious about Western democracy when he wrote article in Foreign Affairs in 1994.

Interestingly enough, in this context, Kim Dae Jung, former President of Korea, rebuffed in the same year by stating that Asian tradition is not against democracy but for democracy as much as Western culture is.

Another echo of Asian political leader then came from former Malaysia Prime Minister, Mahathir in 1996. He points out that Asian nations have highly varying historical and religious background: Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, Japan is somewhat Confusian, as is South Korea, with Shintoism and Buddhist playing some role, and Thailand is Hinayana Buddhist. However, he believed that there exist a stratum of common values and beliefs that most Asians follow as a guide through the world: these formed the concept of Asian values. Mr. Mahatir went so far as to say that Asian value is universal and Western value is just European. Many discussions have occurred since then including academics especially in terms of universality of Asian values.

Indeed, the concept of Asian value can hold many different meanings in different contexts. A comprehensive understanding for Asian value can generally be described as follows. First, a harmony in community rather than conflict should be regarded as essential of all, and thus clear legal standards can sometimes be overlooked in order to preserve a harmony in community. Second, society or community tends to be given higher priority than individual right to choice and at the same time people stressed on respect for authority, which are seen to guarantee stability for an entire society. Third, in this sense, it can be critically described as paternalistic society or crony capitalism. And fourth, usually speaking, various religions peacefully coexist and supplement each other.

Let me point out that these arguments on Asian value were made by the first generation of giant Asian political leaders who accomplished prosperity in Asian society. In my view, increased economic power of Asian countries and attainment of more robust position in the world economic system after 1970's gave Asian leaders self-confidence and wish to play a more substantive role in international political arena. Also, the concept of Asian values was often used by the Asian political leaders to sometimes oppose Western, particularly American, pressure to honor their claim of a set of universal standards of democracy and human rights. I suppose exactly same kinds of justification nowadays can be observed in Islamic countries in Asia and Middle East, claiming their Islamic values as opposed to universal American concept of democracy.


2. Social Integrity and Economic Development

Then, how does traditional Asian values and integrity in development of society coexist? Here, I would like to touch upon our history. The success of Asia after World War II has often been referred to as a miracle in the world history, since it is regarded that Asian countries have achieved both economic prosperity and democracy at a time with some exceptions. If we take into account some comparable developments that took place in the rest of the world, for example, the collapse of the Soviet Union, sluggishness in East Europe, insecurity in the Middle East and Latin America, struggles in Africa, you may comprehend why continuous prosperity and democracy in Asia, especially East Asia, can be described as a miracle in the world history. As a person living in the political world, in particular of today's generation, I believe we must neither halt nor reverse this superb tradition of continuing success in Asia.

East Asia including Japan and China increased its share of world GDP by 10 percent during the past three decades, while the others, except for Europe, have reduced its proportion. As you may all know, a source of economic prosperity in Asia lies in the model of "export-driven" economic growth. The term export-driven is often referred to with some negative tone, but I take it in a positive sense that they have been engaging themselves with the rest of the world by exporting goods and services. In other words, a unique characteristic of Asian tradition is to keep their window open in the form of international division of labor and world trade system. I think this is a true meaning of Asian value and an origin of our intrinsic strength.

If we compare Thailand with Myanmar, or South Korea with its northern neighbor, apparently the latter countries have heavily suffered from their isolation. You may realize how crucial it is for a country to keep open itself to the world in order to achieve not only economic prosperity but also democracy.

To be sure, in terms of politics and democracy, it is a truth that authoritarian political regime of national governance structure can practice political repression and starve the poor at the same time. Conversely, an end to oppression commonly realizes the alleviation of poverty. Indeed, to quote a phrase of Amartya Sen, Novel Prize academics, accountable governments manage to avert famine by heeding the warnings of a free press. Apparently by integrating Asian values many Asian countries succeed in accomplishing both prosperity and democracy. I believe the notion of Asian value has our wisdom in it.


3. Japan's Case

Lastly, let me make an example of a more contemporary version of Asian values issue we are now experiencing in Japan. That is, how Asian value-type argument can be employed in domestic reform process.

In the Upper House election held in July, the LDP, a ruling party, lost by decreasing its seat from 51 to 49, while the DPJ, largest opposing party increased from 38 to 50. As long as current ruling coalition between the LDP and the Komei Party maintains, this election result does not necessarily stand for a possible change of the current administration, but apparently it indicates falling popularity of Koizumi administration among voters. Indeed, in this three years Prime Minister's approval figure has dramatically dropped from above 80% to below 40 %.

The incumbent Koizumi Administration was unprecedented when Mr. Koizumi won the LDP leadership race against the background of people's enthusiasm for reform in March 2001. Mr. Koizumi was emerged as genuine reformer. He has proposed wide spectrum of reform items including privatization of postal services, highways and fiscal consolidations. But in my judgement, the structure itself, which Mr. Koizumi declared to reform and break down, has been a strong political base of the LDP in terms of votes and campaign contributions.

It is commonly observed in Asian countries that structural reform tends to enlarge a disparity between who has and has not, between urban area and rural area, or between new emerging industry and old ailing industry. Therefore as Mr. Koizumi's reform plan put into place, it is quite natural that the number of supporter of LDP evidently started to decline since he hurts specific groups which have been protected by the LDP. On the other hand, ironically, who benefited form the reform tends to support opposing party, since they desire more drastic reform and generally find Mr. Koizumi's approach to be so slow. The LDP may continue to suffer from Koizumi's reform in both ways, unless we could convince people where Japan should arrive after this reform plan.

Interestingly enough, in the privatization of postal services, which is now intensely debated, the 'old guard' group in the LDP generally states that postal service must be nationally owned in order to preserve good and traditional rural community, because postal stations in rural areas usually function as a community service center.

Well, I think this sounds like misleading Asian value argument, because apparently those who benefit from privatization should be Japanese consumers. Traditional value in community can be used as pretext not to reform it. But I believe Japanese traditional value of community and efficient management of public services should coexist, and a lot of evidences can be observed in Asian countries.


4. Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to put an emphasis on the importance of the fact that Asia is a region of diversity with various cultural, ethnic, language and religious backgrounds as well as in terms of its developmental stages. Unlike Europe, Asia may not be one Asia yet in view of its diversified nature of the region. But we must not allow this Asian diversity into a divide in Asia. Asian diversity is a chance for Asian people. I believe, as long as we could share the sense of this Asian value, our wisdom will work for positive way.

Thank you.