Margaret Thatcher - Statecraft

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.

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.

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