The Asian D
ASIAN values emerged as a political issue in the 1980s, when former Singapore Premier Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysian Premier Mahathir Bin Mohamad challenged the West, juxtaposing Asian success against what they saw as the West's hegemony oriented thinking, and its claims of universal standards of democracy and human rights. One scholar writes: In Malaysia, after a crackdown on opposition in the late 1980s led to Western criticism of the government's human rights record, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad defended "Asian" notions of governance and accused the West of "ramming an arbitrary version of democracy" down the country's throat.'1 The critics of Asian values argued back that Singapore and Malaysia resented western criticism of their brand of authoritarianism, and were indulging in misguided criticism of liberal democracy.
Francis Fukuyama claimed that Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad were pursuing a relatively narrow agenda' in advancing their argument on Asian values, but he conceded that the idea of a distinct Asian cultural and political identity had a larger resonance as well
it reflected genuine pride felt by many people in the region at the stunning success of their economies
(and) served the interests of states eager to shield themselves from Western criticism of their human rights practices and from pressure to open their protected markets to imports and foreign investments.'2 Fukuyama felt that Asian values offered an apparently principled defence of their reluctance to broaden political participation', for countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and China.
This debate is not the entire story of Asian values. Behind the political hype, there exists behaviour similarity and value systems reflecting Asian characteristics. Let us first consider the issue of global values, and then the distinctive Asian cultural traits, before turning to an Asian diplomatic style.
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