From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Asahi Shimbun
, a liberal,
anti-war, pro-democracy Japanese newspaper, invited me to a forum in Tokyo in
May 1991 to discuss the subjects of human rights and democracy with prominent
Japanese and American opinion formulators. I said it was 50 years since the
British and French first gave independence with Western-type constitutions to
over 40 former British colonies and 25 former French colonies. Unfortunately,
both in Asia and Africa the results have been poor. Even America had not
succeeded in leaving a successful democracy in the Philippines, a former colony
it freed in 1945 after 50 years’ tutelage. I suggested that a people must have
reached a high level of education and economic development, must have a

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sizeable middle class, and life must no longer be a fight for basic survival, before
that society could work such a democratic political system.
The following year the 
Asahi Shimbun
forum again discussed democracy and
human rights, and their effect on economic development. I said that since
different societies had developed separately for thousands of years in disparate
ways, their ideals and norms were bound to be different. Therefore it was not
possible to insist that American or European standards of human rights of the
late 20th century be imposed universally. However, with satellite television, it
had become increasingly difficult for any government to hide its cruelties to its
own people. Slowly but inevitably, the community of nations would find a
balance between non-interference in another country’s internal affairs and the
moral right to insist on more civilised and humane treatment by all governments
of their own peoples. But as societies became more open, there would be
convergence towards a common world standard of what was acceptable.
Inhuman, cruel or barbaric methods would be condemned. (In the case of
Kosovo some six years later, although NATO and a large majority of the UN
could not accept Yugoslav President Milosevic’s barbarism against the Albanian
Kosovars, there was no unanimity that this was sufficient ground for intervention
without the sanction of the UN Security Council. Russia, China and India,
representing 40 per cent of humanity, condemned the bombing of Serbia by
NATO in 1999.)
One interview I gave to the respected American journal, 
Foreign Affairs
, was
published in February 1994, causing a minor stir among Americans interested in
the Asian versus Western values debate. In my answers, I avoided using the term
“Asian values”, of which there are many different kinds, and instead referred to
Confucian values, the values that prevail in the cultures of China, Korea, Japan
and Vietnam, countries that used the Chinese script and had been influenced by
Confucian literature. There are also some 20 million ethnic Chinese among the
peoples of Southeast Asia whose Confucian values are not the same as Hindu,
Muslim or Buddhist values of South and Southeast Asia.
There is no Asian model as such, but there are fundamental differences
between East Asian Confucian and Western liberal societies. Confucian societies
believe that the individual exists in the context of the family, extended family,
friends and wider society, and that the government cannot and should not take
over the role of the family. Many in the West believe that the government is
capable of fulfilling the obligations of the family when it fails, as with single
mothers. East Asians shy away from this approach. Singapore depends on the

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strength and influence of the family to keep society orderly and maintain a
culture of thrift, hard work, filial piety and respect for elders and for scholarship
and learning. These values make for a productive people and help economic
growth.
I stressed that freedom could only exist in an orderly state, not when there
was continuous contention or anarchy. In Eastern societies the main objective
was to have a well-ordered society so that everyone could enjoy his freedom to
the maximum. Parts of contemporary American society were totally
unacceptable to Asians because they represented a breakdown of civil society
with guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy and vulgar public behaviour. America
should not foist its system indiscriminately on other societies where it would not
work.
Man needs a moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing as evil,
and men are not evil just because they are victims of society. I said in