Asian Values

Asian values is a controversial concept associated with prominent Asian politicians and establishment [Page 84]intellectuals who claimed that the Asian postwar “economic miracle” was due to the shared culture of East Asian societies, especially those of Confucian heritage. They asserted that the “Asian values” that explained this success were discipline, hard work, frugality, educational achievement, balancing individual and societal needs, and deference to authority. Proponents argued that Western models of liberal human rights, democracy, and capitalism were unsuited to East Asia because they fostered excessive individualism and legalism. This had undermined social order and economic dynamism in the West. Critics pointed to the contradictions and weaknesses in these claims and argued they served the interests of Asia's authoritarian elites. These arguments connect with debates in political theory over universalist and particularist accounts of human rights, social justice, and social order, as well as social, economic, and political change. They are also related to wider conservative political and philosophical attacks on liberal democracy.

Claims about Asian values garnered particular attention in the early 1990s because they were articulated by prominent politicians such as former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew at a time when the achievements of rapidly modernizing East Asian societies gave them a new global prominence and clout. These claims conflicted with liberal assertions that the collapse of European communism and China's market socialism marked the triumph of liberal democracy, human rights, and capitalism over competing forms of organizing societies. Asian values proponents challenged the trade and development aid conditionality promoted by the United States and other governments in the West.

The Asian values debate was also internal to Asian societies. At a time of rapid economic and social change in East Asia, growing individualism and democratization and human rights movements challenged established socioeconomic orders and authoritarian regimes. These debates were part of struggles over competing visions of modernity and who should legitimately decide how Asian societies should be organized.

Proponents of Asian values made several interconnected claims. They said human rights are culturally specific. Internationally dominant understandings of human rights are rooted in liberalism and the development of economic organization and state-society relations in the West, and so are not suited to East Asian societies. The distinct values of the latter have enabled rapid economic development and growth. Because of culture, but also because economic development must be prioritized in societies climbing out of poverty, civil and political rights should be subordinate to economic and social rights. The state is said to embody the collective identity and interests of its citizens; its rights should take priority over those of the individual. Asian values proponents defended state sovereignty, including the right to noninterference by outsiders promoting liberal human rights, democracy, and capitalism. Asian values proponents also argued that liberal universalist claims serve Western interests, much as European and American claims of moral superiority legitimated colonialism historically. These ideas were expressed in the 1993 Bangkok Declaration on human rights, which was signed by many Asian governments but criticized by many Asian human rights organizations.

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