Kishore Mahbubani on the New Asian Hemisphere

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There was a time when the West could lecture the rest of the world about human rights, but everything changed after Guantanamo, says Mahbubani. The West still remains the gold standard for democracy and human rights, but unless it is honest about torture, it has no right to lecture the rest of the world.

Am so inspired by this man, I'm thinking of reading one of his books..
http://www.amazon.com/New-Asian-Hemisphere-Irresistible-Global/dp/1586484664

I started out wanting to put excerpts of his interview here, but ended up copying so much because the things he says, the points he brings up, are so valid! At least they are in my opinion.

Int: First I would like to ask you, what is actually this rise of the Asian economies, and how did it come about?
KM: It is, actually, a great historical mystery why it’s happening now. I mean when you consider the fact, okay, that from the year 1 to the year 1820, China and India had, for 18 centuries, the two largest economies, why did it take them 200 years to once again succeed? I mean that’s a great historical mystery. But the good news is that more and more Asian states now know what they have to do, and indeed what they have to do is to basically implement the seven pillars of Western wisdom. And there’s what I call the march to modernity, you know. It began with Japan. You know, first initially the Meiji Restoration, and then from Japan, it went through Four Tigers: South Korea; Taiwan: Hong Kong; Singapore. Then to Southeast Asia. From Southeast Asia it went to China. And then from China it went to India. And from India, this march to modernity is about to enter the Islamic world and West Asia: that’s a wonderful thing to happen. If you can imagine modern, modernizing Islam states, that’s good for global stability and good for the West.


Int: In your book you present a pretty negative view of the West in sometimes harsh ways. Why is that?
KM: Well, I think the biggest danger that the world faces today is that the dominant, powerful societies are the Western societies, and therefore the decisions that they make have a powerful impact on world history. Now, if they understand how the world is changing and adapt to it, we will have, hopefully, a more peaceful course of world history. But if Western intellectuals continue to have what I call an incestuous, self-referential, self-congratulatory dialogue among themselves, where they reinforce each other’s, you know, prejudice against the rest of the world, then it’s very dangerous.

Int: Is that something you see very often?
KM: Oh, I see it every day. I mean if you, if you open the newspapers, any international news service: International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, I mean look at the amount of lectures they give to China. Right? About how China must change, dah, dah, deh. Excuse me, the Chinese have had the world’s fastest-growing economy for 30 years. The Chinese have opened up their society in a profound way. Indeed, one of the most shocking statements I quote is from an Indian intellectual, right, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who says, you know, the difference between China and India is that India is an open society with a closed mind; China is a closed society with an open mind. And the fact that an Indian intellectual can see that the Chinese mind is open, and the West cannot see that the Chinese is open, is quite remarkable.

in the long run, all societies have to become democratic. There is no alternative long term destination: the destination is not in doubt, but the question is about the route. And the Western assumption, especially in recent times, has been that you can go from a non-democratic state to a democratic state overnight. History teaches us you cannot do it overnight. Indeed, if you look at the case of Russia that went overnight from a Communist party system to a democracy, you saw an economic implosion in Russia: living standards went down; infant mortality rates went up; life expectancy came down: the Russian people suffered. And indeed, if you want to understand why the Russians are so bitter towards the West, because you know at a time when they were suffering in the 1990s, the West was saying, Yeay, Russia! [applauds]. Well done, well done! You’re democratic. And you know from… The Chinese can think, you know. The Chinese can observe how much Russia suffered from an immediate transition, and, and it observed the West cheering while the Russians were suffering, and they say, that’s what the West will do to us: they will cheer when we also suffer. And, you know, you must understand that from the Chinese perspective, if you look back over the last 200 years, the last… the past 30 years have been among the best 30 years for the Chinese people. Four hundred million people, about the population of Europe, have been lifted up from poverty: that’s a powerful gift to the Chinese people, and instead of applauding what the Chinese have done, every day the Western media goes after China: why don’t you have democracy? Why don’t you have democracy? And, frankly, the Chinese are tired of listening to these lectures.

Int: Do they tell you that?
KM: Oh, yes! Of course. And, you know, I got a story, actually, in my previous book entitled 'Beyond the age of Innocence: Rebuilding trust between America and the World'. A Chinese intellectual, one of the China’s most powerful intellectuals, said to me, you know, Kishore, before Guantánamo, when the Americans came to lecture to us on human rights, we would disagree with them officially, but in our heart of hearts we said, yes, the Americans have a right to lecture us: their standards of human rights are here; our standards are here. He said, after Guantánamo, everything changed. And the Chinese said to the Americans, excuse me: "we beat up people, you beat up people; what’s the difference"? Stop lecturing us. First fix your own human rights record. And if you had told me, ten years ago, that the first modern developed country to re-introduce torture would be United States of America, I would have said "Never"! It could never happen. The unbelievable has happened. But what is even more stunning, is that Western intellectuals still want to preserve the moral high horse, and want to be able to give lectures to the rest of the world, when their own record is now chequered. And the rest of the world, believe me, looks at this: they can see the double standards, and they say, please, stop lecturing the rest of the world.

Int: What is needed to open up that kind of self-referential?
KM: Ah, I hope they begin reading my book. I mean it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be easy. I mean… Take, take, for example, this, this book of mine. It has got a tremendous amount of attention in Asia, right? You get these wonderful reviews in India, China, Southeast Asia, saying…

Int: Of course it’s a morale boost, of course, for Asians.
KM: I know, they practically they make up the majority of the world’s population, excuse me - when the vast majority of the world’s population says that this is a book that finally describes how we think and feel, neither the New York Times, nor the Washington Post will review the book.

Int: They don’t want to review it?
KM: Well, they were sent the book by several people: several friends of mine in New York sent them the book. Now, they are not interested in listening to a completely different perspective. They want to hear American voices describing how the rest of the world is. They don’t want to hear non-American voices describing how the rest of the world thinks.

nt: The Economist called your plea anti-Western?
KM: Yes. The fact that the Economist would describe my book as anti-Western showed that they completely didn’t understand the book. Because my book, at the end of the day, tries to prescribe a happy future for the West, by saying that if the West adjusts to this completely new world order, it’ll be better off. I mean look at the current policies of the West. You have angered and alienated 1.2 billion Muslims, right? You have angered in many ways the Chinese people just most recently. Look at the Olympics torch relay. Look at all the protests against China. Look at the angry Nationalist backlash in China against the West. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to wake up an angry Chinese Nationalism? It’s not in your interests. Why do you insult 1.2 billion Chinese people? No, it shows a complete closed Western mind. And, you know, that’s why I wrote this book as sharply as I did. Many parts of the book will cause Westerners pain, but that is an important part of getting out of your comfortable mental zones. Because you’re so happy talking to yourself, it is painful to hear a voice that doesn’t say, gee, you are the greatest thing, you know, ever invented in the history of humanity.

Int: So, basically what you’re saying to western and intellectuals is, don’t preach what the situation should be, but look at what has happened over 20 years.
KM: Look, look at the trend line. I mean, are they, are these societies progressing, changing, opening up? And listen to the voices of their people. Take a very small indicator, right? For a long time there was a brain drain, right, from Asia to the west, and which, by the way, which was a good thing in many ways. I remember the former prime minister of India, Rajeev Gandhi was asked, aren’t you worried about a brain drain? And he gave a brilliant reply, he said, better a brain drain than a brain in the drain. So, if these brains can be used and nurtured and developed, they have become potential long-term assets for the Asian economies. And today, guess what? you see a reverse brain drain taking place. You see people with PhDs from American universities going back to India, and guess what? Going back to China. Why? Now, if there, if China was a closed society, an oppressive society with no freedom, why are the best brains coming back to work in Chinese universities? And you know, every year over 20 million Chinese travel overseas, and you know what? Over 20 million Chinese return home. You don’t get what you did in the Soviet Union days, you know, when the Soviets, whenever they had a chance to leave, they would jump ship and seek asylum. Very few Chinese are seeking asylum, they’re all going home.

You know, I’m glad you said that it sounds painful to the western ear, because it shows how little the west has studied its own history. I mean the, the longest democracy in the world is American democracy, right? They preached the concept of equality of man in 1776. Guess what? It took them almost 100 years, right, to get rid of slavery. It took them 150 years to give the women the right to vote, and it took them almost 200 years, till 1960s before the blacks got the effective right to vote, 200 years. Now, if America took 200 years from very auspicious beginnings to achieve full democracy, if China does it in 50 years, pretty fast, isn’t it? Pretty good, right? So why do you expect China to be able to do it overnight? You know, it, the critical thing is, are these societies opening up and going in the wrong, the right direction? I mean certainly Myanmar is going in the wrong direction, no one doubts it. There’s no development, no change whatsoever. But China is going in the right direction. So, but this, this is why many Asians believe that when the west preaches to China, there’s some other agenda going on here. Because why can’t you see the obvious improvements in China? The real, the real agenda is that you’re frightened of China’s rise. You’re worried of China’s rise, and you’re trying to look at the deficiencies. And every, every society’s got deficiencies. And in the east, in the area of human rights, you know, I actually believe that the whole world should move towards more progressive respect of human rights. We should in fact, implement the principles of the universal human rights declaration, I believe in that too. But the record has been clearly seen, and this is something that the west is not aware of, is that the west has got so many double standards on human rights. The west, the rest of the world sees your double standards. You don’t see your double standards, and you continue preaching. It’s like a priest, okay. If you know that the priest doesn’t implement the own principles that he preaches on Sundays, would you respect him? And that’s how the rest of the world sees the west when he preaches on human rights.

nt: So, what you’re saying is, do as you preach, but then you might also say, the Chinese aren’t preaching, so they can do what they want.
KM: I think the Chinese are thinking very hard about the future directions of their society. You know, in my book I quote a private conversation between the premier, Wen Jiabao and Mr John Thornton, the president, the chairman of Brookings Institution. And Wen Jiabao says you know, in this conversation, yes, we know China has to change, yes, we know that China has to become democratic. But their big challenge is how do they go from the present system to becoming democratic while preserving the political stability. Because they need this political stability. You know, in the Chinese mind the biggest worry is not lack of freedom, the biggest worry is what they call, luan, chaos. Because throughout Chinese history there’s been a tremendous amount of chaos, and the west doesn’t understand this Chinese obsession with order. The Chinese obsession with order is the result of 2,000 years of experience where you had centuries of disorder. They don’t want to go through centuries of disorder.

Now, you see the exact opposite in Asia. In Asia, the success of one Asian society affects its neighbours, and there’s a continuous ripple effect. Japan’s success led to the success of the four tigers, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore. It led to the success of the South East Asian economies, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and then when Deng Xiaoping visited Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, he said, my God, why are these societies ahead of us? We must change. He changed China, and then when China took off, the Indians said, hey, if China can do it, why not us? We are as good. And so now the west Asians are saying if India can do it, why not us? So, there’s a progressive process of learning.

the most important thing for the Western mind to accept now, is to understand that we are moving from a mono-civilizational world to a multi-civilizational world. From one successful civilization, to many successful civilizations, and these other successful civilizations are not carbon copies of the West, they look at the world very differently. You have to reach out and understand them and the pragmatic spirit is one which says, hey you may not be like me, but I can try to understand you, I can try to figure out how you work, what you do and so on and so forth. Up to now, especially since the end of the Cold War, the Western mind has become very ideological in its belief that there is only one path of history, now suddenly there are many different paths of history.

long run, aren’t we running the risk of the rivalry between India and China, coming to an explosion?
KM: Yes, that is a possibility and I would say that there is some degree of anxiety, not just within China and India, but also within China and Japan also, so it is possible that that can happen. But, the good news is that since China and India want to emerge as great powers in the same way that Japan and Germany did after World War Two, they can both emerge as great powers in a [?] game. And, look at the, you know, let’s take China and India, I think in the year 2003, or something like that, India and China set a goal of saying, hey let’s trade more with each other. So, they set a goal of achieving 10 billion dollars trade by 2010, I think they achieved it by 2005. Then they said, oh let’s achieve a goal of 20 billion dollars trade, they achieved that already also. And, now they’re saying, let’s achieve the goal of 30 billion dollars trade. Now, this is only in six, seven years, to set a goal of 10 billion, achieve it, 20 billion, achieve it, now 30 billion, and they’re going to achieve it too. That’s an example of how the Chinese and Indian economies are becoming inter-linked. And, take China and Japan, right? Today the number that…for a long time the number one trading partner for Japan was United States of America, in the last two years, it’s China. For a long time the number one trading partner for Korea was United States of America, today it’s China. So, the growing inter-connectedness of trade in the East Asian region is phenomenal, the fastest growing trade floors in the world. And, when you have trade and inter-dependence, the incentive to go to war or to engage in rivalry becomes less and less in each passing year.