Victor Mallet - The Trouble With Tigers - The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia

So successful were Asian authoritarians in promoting their own version of human rights that they almost turned the tables on the western countries they had accused of bullying them. Chris Patten, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, said shortly before the territory was handed over to China in July 1997 that he believed the West should pursue both its commercial and political objectives energetically, but as separately as possible: trade, in other words, should not be a political lever. He added a warning: ‘If we are not to mix them up, then we should not permit Asian countries to play the same game in reverse, threatening that access to their markets can be allowed only to the politically correct, to those prepared to be muzzled over human rights. We should not allow ourselves to be demeaned in this way – with Europe played off against America and one European country played off against another, and with all of us treading gingerly around the sensitivities of one or two countries, deferring to the proposition that open and vigorous discussion should be avoided at all costs.’ 46 It is not only westerners who feel uncomfortable about the use of ‘Asian values’ in foreign policy. Asean defends its members’ human-rights policies – or lack of them – on the basis of supposedly distinctive Asian cultural traditions, but Thai and Filipino diplomats have complained that they do not share in these purported traditions: on the contrary, they regard their own democratic values to be at least as valid as the authoritarian ones of Singapore or Indonesia.

In 1993, at the height of the ‘Asian values’ debate, it was pointed out that one reason for doubting the widely-held view that the twenty-first century would be a ‘Pacific Century’ was the lack of a genuine Asian value system with international appeal. ‘A strong economy is a precondition for domestic health, military strength, and global influence,’ wrote Morton Abramowitz, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a perceptive analysis of Asian hubris. ‘But in an interdependent world, those that aspire to lend their name to centuries must also have political strengths and value-systems that enable them to project influence persuasively. Economic power without acceptance of the responsibilities and burdens of leadership ultimately engenders divisiveness and hostility.’ 47 For all the speeches and articles extolling ‘Asian values’, there is little sign of an emerging Asian ethic that appeals to the peoples of Asia, let alone the outside world. However, the search for a stronger value system, whether it is labelled ‘The Asian Way’ or something else, will doubtless continue. Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani says the debate has only just begun, and will continue for another hundred years or more. Anand Panyarachun, who was twice prime minister of Thailand in the 1990s, bemoans the greed and consumerism of present-day south-east Asia but has not given up the search for something better. ‘Asian values today appear to be glorifying personal interest,’ he said. ‘Yet the essential objective of any ethical society must be the realization of public aspirations. In that quest, ethics cannot be divorced from good governance.’ 48

When governments pursue immoral or foolish policies cloaked in specious ethics, it is not just nasty. It may be dangerous for the countries concerned. Take the environment debate in south-east Asia. In 1994, Christopher Lingle, an American professor at the National University of Singapore, responded to a rather triumphalist article by Mahbubani that extolled the virtues of Asia and belittled Europe for its inability to extinguish the ‘ring of fire’ on its borders caused by political upheavals. Lingle thought this image more appropriate for south-east Asia because – as he pointed out in his article – Singapore and parts of Malaysia and Indonesia were at that moment choking from the smoke from Indonesian forest fires raging out of control. More significant than the fires themselves was the refusal of south-east Asian governments to do anything about them or the consequent pollution affecting their citizens because members of Asean are not supposed to interfere in each others’ affairs. ‘These Asian states seem more interested in allowing fellow governments to save face than in saving the lives of their citizens or preserving the environment,’ he wrote. 49 He went on to discuss the dangers of not having a free media. As it happened, Lingle fled from Singapore because he was taken to court over the same article for questioning the independence of the judiciary. But his comments on the forest fires proved prophetic. Three years later, the fires – an annual occurrence typically started by logging companies, plantation developers and slash-and-burn farmers – were so severe that vast areas of southeast Asia were shrouded in smoke and some people suffered serious breathing difficulties. In Sarawak, one of the Malaysian territories on the island of Borneo, visibility was reduced to a few metres, airports, offices and schools were closed and the government declared a state of emergency. President Suharto of Indonesia apologized, but there was no immediate sign of a change of attitude among the proponents of ‘Asian values’; according to them, neither foreigners nor environmental groups within south-east Asia have any business interfering with the rights of governments and their business partners to cut down forests at an unsustainable rate and sell the wood.

The myopia of ‘Asian values’ theorists is not confined to environmental issues. Tommy Koh of Singapore visited Cambodia in 1996 and returned, he wrote, ‘with fewer criticisms than other recent observers’. He acknowledged that Cambodia had a long way to go on the journey to democracy and the rule of law, but implicitly criticized Michael Leifer of the London School of Economics for saying that Cambodia had regressed politically since a UN-organized election in 1993 and for calling the Cambodian government ‘a strong-arm regime that intimidates opponents and lets unscrupulous foreign interests exploit natural resources’. 50 Yet Leifer was right. That is exactly what the regime was doing. And just over a year later, the Cambodian leader Hun Sen demonstrated the truth of Leifer’s assertions by staging a coup d’état to seize power fully and remove his co-prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, whose party had won the biggest share of the vote in the election. Some of Hun Sen’s opponents were murdered, others fled. Asian timber companies continued to cut down Cambodian forests.

A worse shock for south-east Asia’s leaders than the Cambodian coup – which for them simply meant an embarrassing delay in admitting Cambodia to Asean – was the regional economic crisis which began in mid-1997. South-east Asian stock markets and currencies plunged after Thailand floated its currency, the baht, and its value fell sharply. There were unremarkable economic reasons for this chain of events. In Thailand itself, they included a stagnation of exports, too much short-term foreign borrowing by Thai companies, an overpriced property market with too many new buildings, too much debt and not enough buyers, and inadequate regulation of the plethora of finance companies which sprang up in Bangkok when the economy was booming. (The business aspects of this are discussed in chapter 4.) Instead of accepting that they had to address their economic problems, however, many south-east Asian leaders instinctively assumed that they were doing a fine job – it was well known, after all, that they were in charge of an economic ‘miracle’ – and that therefore the problems must be the work of outside conspirators. Asean foreign ministers even issued a communiqué blaming ‘well coordinated efforts to destabilize Asean currencies for self-serving purposes’. 51 Such statements, especially the vigorous condemnations and threats coming from Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, made matters worse, convincing international speculators, currency traders and stock market investors that their money would be safer elsewhere.