When China Rules the World

A defining characteristic of all the Asian tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam) [309] has been the speed of their transformation. In 1950 they were still overwhelmingly agrarian and had barely started the process of industrialization. In 1950 79 % of South Korea ’s population worked in agriculture (relatively little changed from 91 % in 1920); by 1960 the figure was 61 %, and today it is around 10 %. In the late 1960s the farming population still comprised half of Taiwan ’s total population, whereas today it accounts for a mere 8 %. [310] The figure for Indonesia in 1960 was 75 % compared with 44 % today, for Thailand 84 % compared with 46 %, and for Malaysia 63 % compared with 18 %. [311] Eighty-five per cent of the population of China worked in agriculture in 1950, but today that figure is hovering around 50 %. A similar story can be told in terms of the shift from the countryside to the cities. In 1950 76 % of Taiwanese lived in the countryside, whereas by 1989 — in a period of just thirty-nine years — that figure had been almost exactly reversed, with 74 % living in cities. [312] The urban population in South Korea was 18 % in 1950 and 80 % in 1994; while in Malaysia, which took off later, the equivalent figures were 27 % in 1970 and 53 % in 1990. [313] In China the urban population represented 17 % of the total population in 1975 and is projected to be 46 % by 2015. [314] We could also add Japan in this context, which experienced extremely rapid growth rates following the Second World War, its GDP increasing by a factor of over fourteen between 1950 and 1990 as it recovered from the devastation of the war and completed its economic take-off with a major shift of its population from the countryside to the cities. Between 1950 and 1973, its most rapid period of growth, its GDP grew at an annual rate of 9.29 %.

Compared with Europe, the speed of the shift from the countryside to the cities is exceptional. Germany’s urban population grew from 15 % in 1850 to 49 % in 1910 (roughly coinciding with its industrial revolution), and 53 % in 1950. The equivalent figures for France were 19 % in 1850 and 38 % in 1910 (and 68 % in 1970). England’s urban population was 23 % in 1800, 45 % in 1850, and 75 % in 1910. In the United States, the urban population was 14 % in 1850, 42 % in 1910, and 57 % in 1950. [315] If we take South Korea as our point of comparison (with a population broadly similar to that of Britain and France), the proportion of its population living in cities increased by 62 % in 44 years, compared with 52 % for England over a period of 110 years, 34 % over 60 years for Germany (and 38 % over 100 years), 19 % over 60 years for France (and 49 % over 120 years), and 28 % over 60 years (and 43 % over 100 years) for the United States. In other words, the rate of urbanization in South Korea was well over twice that of Germany’s — the fastest of these European examples — and was achieved in approximately two-thirds of the time; it was three times quicker than France’s, taking roughly two-thirds of the time, and twice as quick as that of the United States in two-thirds of the time.

The shift from the countryside to the cities, from working on the land to working in industry, is the decisive moment in the emergence of modernity. From experiencing life on the land, where little changes from one year to the next, or from one generation to another, industrialization marks a tumultuous transformation in people’s circumstances, where uncertainty replaces predictability, the future can no longer be viewed or predicted in terms of the past, and where people are required to look forwards rather than backwards. In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, the shift towards modernity as an increasingly mass phenomenon was confined to a small minority of the world, namely the West and Japan, but by the early twenty-first century it had become an increasingly mass phenomenon in much of East Asia too, with the change occurring far more rapidly in East Asia than it had earlier in Europe or North America. This relative speed of change had two important implications for the nature of East Asian modernities, which distinguishes them from their European and North American counterparts.

1. The Proximity of the Past

The fact that large-scale agrarian employment has been such a recent experience for the Asian tigers means that the past is heavily imprinted on the present and the legacy of tradition remains a living force in the era of mass modernity. Let me put this point in more human terms. In South Korea and Taiwan, the great majority of grandparents, around half of parents over fifty, and significant numbers of those over forty, will all have spent at least some of their lives working on the land. In China, where half the population still works on the land, that rural imprint is commensurately larger: not only will the great majority of grandparents have worked on the land, but so will the great majority of those over forty. As one would expect, this has a profound influence on the way in which people think and behave. Almost three-quarters of the inhabitants of Taipei, for instance, regard themselves as migrants: every Chinese New Year, the trains are booked for weeks in advance and Taiwan’s north-south expressway is clogged for hours on end as the vast bulk of the capital’s inhabitants make the journey south to celebrate the festival back in what they still regard as their ancestral homes. The same kind of phenomenon is repeated throughout East Asia. Shanghai is a huge metropolis of 20 million people, plus more than 3 million who move in and out of the city every day seeking work of one kind or another, including many farmers who occupy numerous pavements trying to sell their fruit and vegetables. [316] Shanghai, like many cities in the region, encapsulates a remarkable juxtaposition of the present and the past, of modernity and tradition existing cheek by jowl, as was once the case in European cities. The difference is that because East Asia is changing so quickly, the contrast between the past and the present is much more visible and far more pronounced than it was in nineteenth-century European cities.

Another expression of the imminence of the past can be found in people’s attitudes and belief-systems. On the 1st and 15th of every month, it is common for the Chinese to burn incense and worship their ancestral spirits. Walk through the streets of Taipei, or any Chinese city, on those dates and it won’t be long before you see people burning fake money as an offering to their ancestors. [317] At the Qing Ming Festival at the beginning of April, people return to their villages in huge numbers and spend the day at their ancestral graves. By Western standards, Chinese societies are not very religious, but they are extremely superstitious. Every day many Taiwanese newspapers carry tips prominently displayed on their front pages about what to do and what not to do according to the old lunar calendar. Before any important event or decision — not least, a good night’s gambling — many Chinese will visit the temple and pray to one of the deities. Even otherwise highly rational academics will have their superstitious customs. Many, for example, practise feng shui, even if they don’t particularly believe in it, because it might just make a difference. In Hong Kong, no building is finalized until a feng shui expert has been consulted about its suitability and alterations duly made. In state-of-the-art computer companies in Taiwan ’s Hsinchu Science Park, the guy with the American doctorate hotfoot from working for years in Silicon Valley will set up a table with food and fruits, burn incense and worship the spirits for good fortune. These examples cannot be explained solely in terms of the immediate proximity of the past, since they are also clearly a function of underlying cultural difference. Whatever the reason, the persistence of pre-modern ways of thinking is a striking characteristic of many East Asian cultures.

2. The Future in the Present

As discussed earlier in the prologue to Part I, modernity is the embrace of the future as opposed to a present dominated by tradition: eyes and minds are directed forwards in time rather than backwards as previously. But the extent of the phenomenon varies. It was, and remains, more marked in the United States than in Europe, partly because the American transformation was faster than its European equivalents and partly because the United States, unencumbered by any kind of pre-capitalist tradition, is not weighed down by its past in the same way. But this orientation towards the future is even truer of East Asia than the United States, not because it is unencumbered by the past — on the contrary, the past looms very large indeed both in its proximity and the richness and longevity of the region’s history — but because the speed of transformation has generated a completely different experience and expectation of change. In contrast to Europe and the United States, these countries are characterized by a form of hyper-modernity: an addiction to change, an infatuation with technology, enormous flexibility, and a huge capacity for adaptation.

Thus, if the imminence of the past is one aspect of Asian modernization, another, paradoxically, is its polar opposite, the embrace of the future and a powerful orientation towards change. This is not surprising. If an economy is growing at around 10 per cent a year — or doubling in size every seven years or so — then people’s experiences and expectations are quite different from those in a Western economy expanding at 2 per cent a year. These are not just abstract macro figures: assuming that income distribution is reasonably egalitarian, which it has been in much of East Asia [318] (though no longer in China), then turbocharged growth means a continuing revolution in the living standards of most of society, huge shifts in employment patterns, rapid urbanization, sweeping changes in the urban landscape and accelerated access to a growing range of consumer products, all within less than a generation. These are growth rates that no society has previously experienced, that transform institutions like the family, that offer enormous opportunities but also place new and immense strains on the social fabric. For Britain that kind of shift took the best part of two centuries; for the early Asian tigers it has taken less than forty years. To deal with such change requires a psychology and a mindset, both on the part of the individual and society, which is quite different from the European or North American experience. As Hung Tze Jan, a successful writer who has since become one of Taiwan ’s leading cyber entrepreneurs, philosophically remarked: ‘We have had to change our value system so many times in such a short space of time.’ [319] The result, not surprisingly, is a highly developed pragmatism and flexibility; otherwise it would be quite impossible to cope with such rapid change.

The propensity for rapid change is reflected in the distinctive character and structure of East Asian cities. Unlike European cities — or, indeed, American cities — where the height and character of buildings are carefully regulated and space arranged in zones according to use, Asian cities have no such order: they grow like Topsy, with every area having a little bit of everything and buildings coming in all shapes and sizes. While Western cities generally have a definable centre, Asian cities rarely do: the centre is in a perpetual state of motion as a city goes through one metamorphosis after another, resulting in the creation of many centres rather than one. Shanghai, for example, offers the area around the Shanghai Centre, Lujiazui, the Bund, Hongqiao and Xijiahui, as well as Pudong. Kuala Lumpur had the golden triangle, then KLCC, followed by Putrajaya. Tokyo, like Taipei and Seoul, has grown without method or concept, the product of spontaneous development. The lack of rules, regulations and order that is typical of East Asian cities produces an eclectic and intoxicating mix of benign chaos, compressed energy and inchoate excitement. People make it up as they go along. They try things out. They take risks. Seemingly the only constant is change. Scrap and build is a classic illustration, with little importance attached to conservation, in marked contrast to Europe. [320] Whereas European cities for the most part change relatively little from one decade to the next, Asian cities are constantly being turned upside down. You can rest assured that your favourite landmark in a European city — be it a cinema, a square, a building or an underground station — will still be there when you next visit; the only certainty in many Asian cities is that the furniture will once again have been rearranged so that you won’t even be able to recognize the place, let alone find the landmark. [321]

Japan represents perhaps the most extreme form of this embrace of the future, or hyper-modernity. [322] Unlike Europe or the United States, you will find few old bangers on the roads, there being little demand for used cars — or anything secondhand for that matter. Instead there is a rapacious appetite for the new. Until the post-bubble crisis, Japanese car-makers thought nothing of introducing several model changes a year, rather than the Western norm of one, while the electronics firms that Japan is famous for are constantly changing their product lines. Where the Western fashion industry is happy to turn out two collections a year, one in the autumn and one in the spring, Japanese designers seem to believe in perpetual sartorial motion as one collection follows another at bewildering speed several times a year. Japanese youth have become the cognoscenti of fad and fashion, be it a new electronic game, a new look, the latest mobile phone or another Pokemon style craze. Take your chair in a Japanese hair salon and, be you man or woman, you will immediately be handed a very thick catalogue offering a seemingly infinite range of possible hairstyles and colours from which to choose. Japan is the virtuoso of consumer technology. Constant improvement and innovation are a national pastime: the scooter whose lights automatically switch on as it gets dark, the business card-holder whose lid spontaneously flips open, the toilet seat with its dazzling array of dials and controls, the virtual theme park with rides beyond one’s imagination, and the dance machine which renders the need for a partner redundant.

Walk around Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and virtually every street name is printed in English as well as Chinese. Switch on Taiwanese television and the most popular sports are basketball and baseball. Go to a movie on Saturday night and most of them, in a country internationally renowned for its film directors, are products of Hollywood. Go window-shopping in the underground mall below People’s Square in Shanghai, and many of the models used in the fashion photographs are Caucasian. Wander round the huge Ba Bai Ban department store in Pudong, and you’ll probably see many banners written in English. The top students at Shanghai ’s Fudan University want to do postgraduate studies at American universities or work for American multinationals in Shanghai. Middle-class Malaysians in their thirties are far more likely to have visited Europe or Australia than Japan and China. Go on a shopping spree in Tokyo ’s fashionable Harajuka or Shibuya districts and it won’t be long before you find yourself singing along to a Western pop song blaring out from a boutique or coffee shop.

I vividly recall a softly-spoken Malaysian lawyer telling me: ‘I am wearing your clothes, I speak your language, I watch your films, and today is whatever date it is because you say so.’ [336] Even the term ‘ Asia ’ was a European invention. Everywhere you go in the region, you feel the presence of the West. The sheer power and dynamism of Western modernity has set, and reset, the agenda for East Asia for almost two centuries. From colonialism to Hollywood, from the English language to basketball, from the solar calendar to Microsoft, from the Vietnam War to the IMF, the West has been, and is, present in the East in a way that the East has never been present in the West. Only in the form of Japan has Asian modernity, until the recent rise of China, exercised a significant impact on the West. Otherwise, the presence of the East in the West is largely confined to the mainly post-colonial migration of large numbers of Chinese, Indians, Koreans and others to North America and Europe and their consequent impact on the West in terms, first and foremost, of food, but also language, religion and culture. The constant imperative, both past and present, for Asian nations to negotiate with Western power, influence and presence — first in the era of colonialism (with every East Asian country colonized apart from Japan and Thailand) and then in the post-war era of American hegemony — constitutes a fundamental difference between East Asian and Western modernity.

This brings us to two critical questions. Firstly, to what extent have East Asian societies been influenced and shaped by Western modernity? Secondly, in the process of modernization are they becoming more Western, or less Western, or even, paradoxically, both at the same time? These questions do not lend themselves to simple answers. They vary from one society to another and from one sphere to another in any given society. History, as one would expect, affects the answers a great deal — in particular, whether or not a country was colonized, and if so when and for how long. At the one extreme lie the Philippines — first colonized by the Spanish in 1542, then by the United States in 1899, achieving independence only in 1946 — and Hong Kong, seized by the British after the First Opium War in 1842 and only returned to China in 1997; at the other lies Japan, which managed to escape colonization altogether.

In order to explore the extent of Western influence, and whether or not it is increasing, let us consider four very different examples — language, the body, food and politics.

Language

The language that a group shares is precisely the medium in which memories of their joint history can be shared. Languages make possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it… Every language is learnt by the young from the old, so that every living language is the embodiment of a tradition. [337]

Languages are not simply a means of communication, but embody and articulate a culture. To lose one’s language — and thousands of languages are likely to become extinct over the course of this century as they did in the last — is also to lose, in very large measure, one’s culture. As Hung Tze Jan, the successful Taiwanese publisher, puts it:

Language is essential to form an idea — as long as you keep your unique language, you keep your way of creating ideas, your way of thinking. The traditions are kept in the language. Language was an obstacle to us going out, but it also prevented others getting inside. Language was our Great Wall. [338]

East Asia is home to almost half the top twenty most widely spoken languages in the world today. Unlike the European languages, which were essentially spread by overseas conquest (the reason why the number of English, Spanish or Portuguese speakers now greatly exceeds the population of the countries they originated from), East Asian languages have grown organically in their densely populated, rice-growing homelands, as a result of demographic trends and/or land-based territorial expansion. They are spoken overseas overwhelmingly as a result of migration and consequently only on a relatively small scale. Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world, far exceeding English, but the vast majority of Mandarin speakers live in China; English, by contrast, has flown the nest.

Figure 9. The world’s top twenty languages.

The spread of English since 1945, driven by the global pre-eminence of the United States, has not affected the popularity of the main East Asian languages in their homelands. Not only has English failed to weaken or displace the main North-East Asian languages (Mandarin, Japanese and Korean), the languages themselves have also been relatively little touched by it. Japanese, it is true, has acquired many English loanwords, mainly nouns, but this reflects the typically Japanese way of adding foreign elements to their culture while leaving the Japanese core fundamentally untouched and unaffected. [339] It is fashionable in Japan — as elsewhere in the region — to wear T-shirts bearing an English phrase, or to have shops with English names, or to see advertising with English slogans, but this has no bearing on the extent to which the Japanese speak, or even desire to speak, English. Despite an enormous cohort of English teachers and many years of compulsory English at school, the vast majority of Japanese are unable to speak English with either enthusiasm or facility. [340] Like the English, they remain linguistically insular and unembarrassed by the fact. The Chinese, on the other hand, have become hugely enthusiastic learners of English during the last decade or so and many young educated Chinese speak the language with impressive fluency. One teacher has taken to conducting his classes in huge stadiums with over 20,000 all chanting English phrases in unison. But this Chinese enthusiasm for English in no way reflects a decline in the popularity of Chinese. On the contrary, English remains a strictly second language, acquired for the purpose of conversing with foreigners, an interlocutor language for the young, well-educated and ambitious urban elite. Chinese, unlike Japanese, possesses relatively few English loanwords — or indeed loanwords from any language — and relatively little external structural influence. It has been influenced by the rise of English, for example, in the greater use of polysyllabic words, but only in a limited way: [341] a proposal, several decades ago, to romanize Chinese by replacing characters with Pinyin transliteration came to nothing. [342]

Map 8. The Main Chinese Languages

We should not be surprised by the continuing strength and resilience of Chinese. It is a language that dates back over three thousand years. Its pictographic writing system is shared by all the various Chinese — or Sinitic — languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu and Min: over 70 per cent of Chinese, well over 800 million people, speak just one of those languages, namely Mandarin, a figure which includes various dialects like Shanghainese, and the number is steadily rising as a result of the growing influence of television and the education system. [343] The fact that all Chinese languages and dialects share the same written script, even though they are often unintelligible to each other as spoken (being comparable in their diversity to the Romance languages), has been extremely important in maintaining a wider sense of Chinese identity. Chinese managed to survive long periods of foreign occupation by the Mongols and Manchus. Although both spoke different languages, they not only failed to impose them on the Chinese, but ended up being linguistically assimilated themselves. The influence of Chinese on the neighbouring but different languages of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese has been immense. Each originally developed writing systems for their own languages by transforming or adding Chinese characters — known as hanja and kanji in the Korean and Japanese writing systems respectively. Even though these languages are quite different in linguistic structure from Chinese, such was the prestige of ancient Chinese scholarship that, over time, they became replete with Chinese vocabulary and have remained so ever since. Those who speak Chinese often refer to it as zhongguohuo, or ‘centre realm speech’: Sino-centrism, or what I will describe later as the Middle Kingdom mentality, even extends to how the Chinese perceive their language. Chinese has even managed to survive the onslaught of the alphabetic age, though in reality, of course, it would be well-nigh impossible to create an alphabetic language which could act as the writing system of so many different Chinese languages and a fifth of the world’s population. [344]

The only East Asian countries in which English has acquired a central role are Hong Kong and Singapore, where it is an official language; Malaysia, where it is very widely spoken although the official language is Bahasa Malaysia; and the Philippines, where English is still an official language alongside Tagalog. Apart from the Philippines, which was an American colony, these are all former British colonies. The popularity of English in Singapore and Malaysia owes much to the fact that English — as in India — has acted as a useful common language in a highly multiracial and multilingual environment. In the Philippines, English is used as a language of instruction in schools (from the age of twelve) in what is a complex linguistic archipelago, with Tagalog coexisting with many island dialects. The main language of Indonesia — a patchwork quilt of hundreds of languages — is Bahasa Indonesia, with the old colonial language, Dutch, now insignificant. Similarly, in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, all former French colonies, French, once the official language in administration and education, has long since faded into relative obscurity.

This brings us to a further question. To what extent is English now permanently established as the global second language of choice? [345] It has been steadily strengthening its position in this respect more or less everywhere, often rapidly, with East Asia no exception. At an ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) meeting, or an international academic conference in Beijing, English is likely to be the main, or one of the main, languages of the proceedings. Throughout the region, there is a very strong desire to learn English. [346] There are several reasons why it is believed that the position English has acquired is unlikely to be reversed. Very considerable amounts of both social and personal capital have already been invested around the world in its acquisition and use, which constitute a powerful reason for its continuation and extension. English has established itself as the dominant language of a global media whose influence and penetration is likely to continue to grow. [347] The global ascendancy of the United States ensures that English will remain the foremost language in most fields, from international business and science to the internet and diplomacy. Finally, as the vehicle for the promotion and transmission of the values and norms of a culture, the Anglo-Saxon world has a major vested interest in ensuring the perpetuation of English as the lingua franca, which provides it with considerable economic, political and cultural benefits. [348]

Although English enjoys a formidable battery of assets, these do not render its position impregnable. The international penetration of a language is closely linked to the power and influence of its major patron. The United States may still be globally hegemonic, but, as we saw in Chapter 1, its relative global economic position is being eroded, and this is bound to impact on the fortunes of English in the longer term. English’s dominant position on the internet is already under serious challenge and will certainly not be sustained even in the relatively short run, with the number of Chinese users now exceeding those in the United States. [349] Although English remains the overwhelmingly dominant language of the global media, this situation is unlikely to continue indefinitely as new non-Western players enter the global media market and the main Western providers increasingly use local languages as a means of expanding their market. This process, in fact, is already well under way. Al-Jazeera, the independent Qatar-based Arab news channel, for example, broadcasts in multiple languages, as does the Indian-owned Zee TV, while Star TV in East Asia and Phoenix TV in China, both of which are owned by the Murdoch empire, broadcast in the local languages. [350] Finally, while English has enjoyed a privileged position with new technology — especially in computing — the growing diversification of technological innovation, together with the fact that computers are now able to support a large range of languages, means that English’s hitherto preponderant position in this field is by no means assured. [351]

The position of English as the global lingua franca, which is a very recent development, could therefore prove to be a relatively transient phenomenon. It is not difficult to imagine English’s dominance slowly being eroded and replaced by a rather more diverse scenario. As China ’s influence grows in East Asia, Mandarin is becoming more widely spoken, not just by Chinese around the region, but also, as a second language, by other nationalities and ethnic groups. Mandarin is being offered as an optional or compulsory language at schools in a growing number of countries, including Thailand and South Korea, and is increasingly regarded as the language of the future. In a much weaker way, this trend can also be seen in North America and Europe. As China becomes the economic centre of East Asia, a process already well under way (as we shall see in Chapter 9), there is a compelling reason why Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Thais, Indonesians and Malays — to name but a few — should want to speak Chinese. The main languages of North-East Asia — Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese — moreover have far more in common with Chinese, from which they are partially derived, than they do with English. [352] It seems rather likely that in fifty years’ time Chinese will have replaced, or at least joined, English as an interlocutor language in the region. If that happens, it will be the first time in China ’s modern history that the most widely spoken language in the world will also have acquired the status of a major second language outside its own borders.

As far as language is concerned, then, it would be quite wrong to see East Asia as subject to a one-way process of growing Westernization. The old imperial European languages, with the exception of English, are now of only marginal significance. The region’s main languages remain as influential as ever in their homelands. English has, and is, greatly strengthening its position as the dominant second language, but there are reasons to doubt whether this is likely to continue indefinitely, especially given the decline of the United States and the rise of China, with its implications for the popularity of Mandarin. [353] I will discuss the rise of Mandarin more fully in Chapter 11.

The Body

The body — by which I mean its physical characteristics, especially skin colour, together with style of dress — tells a very different story. The influence of the West in these respects has been profound, especially in North-East Asia, and, to a lesser extent, South-East Asia. In Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, everyday dress as worn by both men and women is highly Westernized — by which I mean the wearing of trousers, shirts, suits, jeans, T-shirts, skirts, blouses and dresses, for example — with traditional clothes, especially in Chinese societies, almost completely confined to relatively ceremonial occasions like weddings. The reason for the virtual disappearance of traditional attire is not obvious; after all, it is not the case in India, where the sari and salwar-kameez (Punjabi suit) for women and the kurta-pajama (loose top and trousers) and bund-gala (jacket) for men, for instance, remain ubiquitous, notwithstanding the fact that Western styles of dress are common, especially in the ‘new economy’ urban centres like Bangalore.

In Japan, Western dress began to spread after the Meiji Restoration. Western clothes were worn by government servants and at official ceremonies, but it was not until much later that they became popular amongst ordinary people. During wartime austerity between 1930 and 1945, simplified Japanese clothes replaced the kimono, which was seen as impractical. During the American occupation after the war, a period of large-scale Westernization, many people switched directly from wartime clothing to Western dress. Starting around 1960, Western dress became the preferred choice of the great majority of Japanese, with the kimono largely reserved for special occasions and, in simplified form (especially for men), for relaxing at home. The traditional kimono has far from disappeared, however. On Sundays it remains a common sight in Japanese cities and is worn by women at weddings, rites-of-passage ceremonies and funerals. It has also become a working uniform in restaurants and hotels. [354]

The Western-style dress now preferred by the Japanese nonetheless retains important elements of national individuality. One example is the ubiquitous soft hat with round brim much favoured as casual wear by Japanese women. The choice of dress and footwear is also influenced by the fact that the Japanese are relatively small. Young Japanese women dress with a marked femininity, reflecting the conservative gender roles that still characterize Japanese society. For men and women alike, in dress as in so much else, there is also a strong group mentality, with less stress on individualism than is the case in the West. Thus, up to a point, there is a distinctive Japanese look, as exemplified by the kawaii child-woman cuteness, a girlie look which has also enjoyed some popularity outside Japan in recent years. [355] The three most famous Japanese design houses — Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake — all of which arrived on the global fashion scene in the 1970s — lie broadly within the Western tradition. However, they demonstrate a marked distinctiveness in comparison with European and American designers. Although each is very different, they are all distinguished by a strong emphasis on materials, the use of sombre and austere colours, a greater willingness to play with the boundaries, and an extremely rapid cycle of collections. While Western fashion is preoccupied with clothes that reveal and emphasize the female form, for these designers the shape of the body and the display of flesh are of much less concern. Indeed, Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo avoids representing the body as overtly sexual. Collectively they can be seen as representing a modestly distinctive Japanese sartorial aesthetic within a global fashion world which remains Western-dominated. [356]

The Chinese story is different from the Japanese but ends up in a rather similar place. For thousands of years, Chinese dress was deeply entwined with social hierarchy, being one of its more important and visible expressions. Only the emperor, for example, was allowed to wear yellow; his sons were required to wear golden yellow, while nobles wore blue-black. [357] As Valerie Steel and John S. Major write:

Clothing was considered a matter of great importance in ancient China. It was an instrument of the magical aura of power through which the emperor ruled the world: in addition, it served to distinguish the civilized from the barbarous, the male from the female, the high from the base, the proper from the improper — in short, it was an instrument of order in a society dedicated to hierarchy, harmony and moderation. [358]

It is not surprising, therefore, that the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew dynastic rule, was also the occasion for a sartorial revolution. The demise of the Qing court led to the dissolution of the old rules. Foot-binding for women, which had persisted for a thousand years, disappeared as did the tradition of male queues (hair worn in a long ponytail), which had been introduced by the Manchus. Chinese dress had been the subject of growing Western influence after the Opium Wars and the establishment of the treaty ports, but the rise of nationalism after 1911 made Western dress more problematic for both sexes. [359] The result was a hybrid, the most famous example being the woman’s qipao, better known in the West as the cheongsam, which combined Chinese, Manchu and Western elements, and which became indelibly associated with Shanghai in the 1930s. Its heyday was between 1930 and 1950, though it persisted for rather longer amongst the overseas Chinese, especially in Hong Kong. [360]

The 1949 Revolution ushered in a new sartorial era. The Communist regime regarded the old styles of Chinese dress as a relic of the feudal past. In their place, the regime encouraged an egalitarian mode of dress that was loosely based around the Sun Yat-sen uniform, wrongly described in the West as the Mao suit. The Sun Yat-sen uniform, featuring a high-collared tunic, was, like the qipao, a hybrid style, and drew on Japanese, German and Soviet military influences. The ubiquitous Maoist style of dress, in contrast, was partly inspired by the traditional trousers, tunic and black cotton shoes of the Chinese peasant. There were no government edicts concerning dress, but the new Maoist style clearly reflected the egalitarian principles of the regime, as well as the poverty of the country. [361] Only after 1978 did this state of affairs slowly begin to change to the point where Chinese cities are now overwhelmingly dominated by Western-style dress. [362] The Maoist style of dress has almost entirely disappeared, as has the Sun Yat-sen uniform previously worn by government officials — to be largely replaced by the Western suit. The only element of traditional Chinese dress that persists amongst ordinary people is the Chinese jacket, which still remains popular, especially amongst the old. Trousers are very widely worn by women, more so than in the West, which is in part a continuation of a much older Chinese tradition, trousers never having had the masculine connotation they once did in the West. [363] Otherwise there is little evidence of traditional Chinese wear, in either traditional or modernized form, for men or women. The only exception is a recent minor revival of the quipao amongst waitresses and hotel staff.

Various designers have sought to reintroduce traditional themes into modern Chinese dress. The best known example is David Tang’s Shanghai Tang label, but it has experienced only limited success, with the clothes in its Hong Kong shops mainly bought by Westerners. Blanc de Chine, another Hong Kong firm, has similar ambitions, as does Shiatzy Chen in Taipei. Designers like Vivienne Tam, Amy Chan and Anna Sui — based mainly in the West — have also explored the use of Chinese elements in their designs. Notwithstanding these efforts, the striking feature of modern Chinese dress — certainly in contrast to India — is how Westernized it is and how little it incorporates traditional Chinese elements. [364] Over the last decade, meanwhile, various features, such as the distinctive Chinese-style collar and buttons, have become increasingly conspicuous in Western women’s fashion, reflecting the growing influence of a Chinese aesthetic. [365] In addition, the enhanced importance of the East Asian market has also led to a small rise in the use of models from the region in Western fashion. [366]

Why have the Japanese and Chinese so comprehensively abandoned their sartorial traditions? Clearly the influence of Western modernity — in this case primarily European — has extended to what people choose to wear. If people want to be modern they feel they must dress in a Western way: Western dress is the sartorial badge of modernity. Another frequently offered explanation is practicality: that traditional forms of dress are seen as largely impractical for modern living. But that does not explain why traditional elements have not found expression in a popularized and modernized form: that is what, after all, has happened with the relentlessly innovative tradition of Western dress. Long dresses and petticoats, doublets and breeches, top hats and tails, may all have disappeared, along with much else, but the Western tradition of dress thrives and prospers. In the Japanese case, traditional (and simplified) forms of dress never came to be regarded as fundamental to the Japanese way of life, or Japanese ‘realm’, [367] as Kosaku Yoshino puts it, unlike language, food, sake (rice wine) and tatami mats, for example. As a consequence, dress was one of the elements that the Japanese were prepared to forsake and see Westernized as part of the process of post-Meiji modernization. In China, in contrast, traditional forms of dress were condemned to virtual extinction by their association with the old dynastic order. After 1978, it was a relatively short sartorial journey from the ubiquitous style of dress of the Maoist era to the Western styles of today.

A similar picture of Western influence holds throughout North-East Asia, including South Korea and Taiwan. Much the same is true of most of South- East Asia as well. The main exception is Malaysia (and to a lesser extent Indonesia), where a majority of Malay women now cover their head with the tudung (headscarf) and wear the baju kurung (a Malay style of dress consisting of sarong and upper tunic). With rapid urbanization and in a highly multiracial environment, this represents a strong statement of cultural identity. In part the style represents a return to Malay tradition, but it is also an appropriation of various Islamic traditions, which have been given a distinctively Malay flavour by the use of strikingly bold colours: [368] Malays have a highly developed sense of fashion, certainly when compared with Indian and especially Chinese Malaysians, with their somewhat drab mimicry of Western dress codes.

If Western dress has been widely adopted in China, Japan and elsewhere for the reasons outlined, why has this not been the case in India, or amongst Malay women, for example? It would seem that in both instances religion has played a crucial role in sustaining traditional forms of dress. A distinctive feature of both China and Japan — and North-East Asia generally — is the lack of any strong tradition of organized religion. This contrasts markedly with India, where Hinduism and to a lesser extent Islam, for example, exercise an extremely important cultural influence. In both, dress plays at least two roles: first, it is a reflection of religious teaching, not least in the rules governing gender dressing, and second, it may act as a means of distinguishing followers of a religion from others. Both these considerations, for example, apply to Malay women and also to Punjabi men, with their uncut hair and turban. Religion has proved a formidable obstacle to Western-style dress in South Asia, whereas in China and Japan it barely constitutes a factor in dress codes.

Tokyo fashion shows use many white models, as well as Japanese, but rarely anyone of darker skin. Comme des Garçons only ever uses white models at its shows. [369] White models are common at Hong Kong fashion week, along with Chinese, but there are rarely, if ever, black or brown models. The local fashion magazines — which are often versions of Western magazines like Vogue or Elle — carry text in the vernacular but the models are overwhelmingly white. [370] A majority of fashion advertising in Hong Kong — though no longer in Japan — uses white (rather than Chinese) models, as does Giordano, the local equivalent of Gap; black or brown models are never to be seen. A walk around the underground shopping mall beneath People’s Square in central Shanghai paints a not dissimilar picture: the advertising mainly features Chinese models but there are plenty of Caucasians and never anyone of darker skin. In India, on the other hand, the models on the catwalks and in the fashion magazines are overwhelmingly Indian, usually of fair complexion. [371]

In an interview with Yang Qingqing, a beauty expert and cult figure amongst Shanghai women, I sought to understand the profusion of white models and the total absence of models with darker skin.

Chinese culture is very open. We can accept things from outside. When we look at a foreigner we will be more tolerant of their beauty. But if they are Chinese we will be more critical. Maybe distance generates an appreciation of beauty, that’s why we like Western features. [372]

Despite my best efforts, she refused to be drawn on why this apparent openness did not include women of darker skin. Mei Ling, a Taiwanese beauty expert who advises Max Factor and acts as a consultant to Chinese pop singers and film stars, was altogether more forthcoming:

In Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland, Chinese girls like white skin products. They think white is beautiful. People have a dream and it is about the West. We are yellow, but we don’t want to be. For Max Factor, Lancôme and the rest, every season it is the same colour — white. It is very boring. We try and sell them a new colour each season, but they just want white. Asians like white skin. For seventy years — the period of make-up — the choice has always been the same — white. Because of the shape of the Chinese face — a small nose, high cheek bones, narrow eyes and absence of facial hair — skin is more important to the Chinese than to Westerners. [373]

There is a huge demand for such whitening products amongst Chinese, Japanese and Korean women and they dominate cosmetic advertising on television and in the press. [374] It is estimated that the Japanese market for whitening products was worth $5.6 billion in 2001, with China (the fastest growing market) valued at $1.3 billion. Much of the advertising aimed at Asian women by Western cosmetic companies uses images and narratives with implicit references to the aesthetic ‘inferiority’ of the ‘dark’ and ‘yellow’ skin tones of Asian women. [375] It is not unusual to see Chinese and Japanese women smothered in white foundation cream and looking — to Western eyes — somewhat ghostly. The racial subtext of all this is clear: black is repel lant, yellow is undesirable and white is good. The desire for whiteness takes other forms. On a sunny day in China, Japan, Singapore and elsewhere, it is very common to see Chinese or Japanese women using parasols and umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun; they do not want to have tanned skin. [376]

The Japanese have long sought to distinguish themselves from other races in East Asia, especially the Chinese. In manga comics and animation films, the Japanese portray themselves in a highly Westernized manner, with big (sometimes blue) eyes, brightly coloured — even blond — hair and white skin, even though black hair, narrow brown eyes and a yellowish skin are more or less universal. [377] Generally lighter than the Chinese, they like to see themselves as white; certainly not yellow, which is how they perceive the Chinese and Koreans. For both the Japanese and the Chinese, black skin has a highly negative connotation and it is not uncommon to see black people portrayed in a derogatory way. [378] A popular advert for San Miguel beer in Hong Kong around 2000 featured a black person as little more than an imbecile. According to Mei Ling, ‘They don’t like to see black skin, only white skin, in the make-up catalogues that I am responsible for compiling.’ [379] A senior executive for one of the top American film studios told me that there was little demand in the region for Hollywood films or TV series with black stars. The most popular look on Japanese or Chinese television or in film might best be described as Eurasian — Japanese or Chinese with Western features. Jackie Chan is a case in point. For both Japanese and Chinese women, white boy-friends can enjoy a certain cachet, but the same is certainly not true of black or brown partners: they are an extremely rare sight and any such decision would require great courage.

The Western form — above all, skin colour, the defining signifier, but also other Caucasian features such as fair hair, large eyes and height — has had a profound and enduring impact on East Asian societies over the last two hundred years. It is something that is rarely commented upon and yet it is more pervasive, more psychologically far-reaching, and more fundamental in terms of identity, than most questions normally discussed in this context. For a Japanese to look in the mirror and wish to see a white person, or to emphasize those features which resemble those of a Caucasian — not easy given the profound physical differences between the two — is a powerful statement of self-image, of how a person feels about him or herself, of their sense of place in the world. It is not uncommon for the Japanese to feel physically inadequate in comparison with Westerners, complementing the sense of national inferiority and insecurity discussed in Chapter 3. The Chinese harbour similar emotions about their physical appearance, but this is less common than amongst the Japanese.

It would be wrong to regard the predilection in East Asia for whiteness, however, as simply a product of Western influence. The desire to be white also has powerful indigenous roots. For both the Japanese and Chinese, whiteness has long carried a powerful class connotation. If you are dark, it means you work on the land and are of a lower order; such a prejudice is deeply embedded in their respective national psyches and has been accentuated by modernization and urbanization, with white a symbol of urban living and prosperity and brown a metaphor for the countryside and poverty. Perceptions of different skin colours are used to define and reinforce national differences, as well as relations between races in the same country, and even between different shades within the same race. Since the Meiji Restoration, skin colour has been used by the Japanese to distinguish them from their Chinese and Korean neighbours. More widely, this hierarchy of colour is reproduced in the relationship between the fairer North-East Asia and the darker South-East Asia, and within South-East Asia between the indigenous population, the Chinese diaspora and the smaller Indian diaspora, for instance. More or less everywhere in East Asia, skin colour is a highly sensitive subject that arouses powerful feelings, perceptions and prejudices, with a near-universal desire to be fairer. The power of the Western racial model is precisely that it reinforces and interacts with very long-established indigenous views about colour. I will return to these themes in Chapter 8 in the context of China.

Food

It is fashionable to cite the spread of McDonald’s in East Asia as a sign of growing Westernization. In 2008 there were 950 McDonald’s stores in China (the first being opened in Shenzhen in 1990) and in 2004 there were approximately 3,500 in Japan and 300 in Malaysia. Starbucks, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut also have numerous outlets in the region: in 2008 KFC had more than 2,200 stores in China and in 2006 Pizza Hut had 140. A 1999 memo on fast food by McCann Erickson, which handled the advertising account in China for McDonald’s, set out its appeal as follows:

It’s about modernity. The fast-food restaurant is a symbol of having made it. The new ‘Western’ fast-food restaurants (though predominantly the Golden Arches) become status symbol locations for the new middle class. It becomes initially their link with showing that they can live the Western (read usually ‘American’) lifestyle. [380]

The combined total of all US fast food stores, however, represents a very tiny fraction of the restaurants and eating places in these countries. They may attract a great deal of publicity but this gives a distorted picture of eating habits in East Asia. The overwhelming majority of people continue to consume the food indigenous to their country. Almost everyone taking lunch or dinner in Beijing or Chongqing will invariably eat Chinese food; the same can be said of the Japanese. Western fast food — including the most popular Western fast food of all, the sandwich — lives at the margins of mass eating habits. Nor do Western-style eateries enjoy a monopoly of the idea of fast food. On the contrary, Chinese and Japanese fast food restaurants — familiar to Westerners in the guise of sushi bars and noodle bars, for example — are infinitely more common.

In his seminal study Food in Chinese Culture, K. C. Chang suggests that ‘the importance of food in understanding human culture lies precisely in its infinite variability — variability that is not essential for species survival.’ [381] People from different cultures eat very differently; even within the same culture there is usually considerable variation. [382] Furthermore, people display enormous attachment towards the food that they have been brought up on and with which they are intimately familiar. The instincts are tribal: in the food hall at the National University of Singapore, I was struck by how the Chinese students ate Chinese food, the Indians ate Indian, and the Malays ate Malay, with little crossover. The same can be said in the West: we might like the occasional Indian, Chinese or Mexican meal, usually heavily adapted for the local palate, but our staple diet is Western — breakfast, lunch and dinner.

At the centre of East Asia’s food tradition, as with language, is China, which enjoys one of the world’s most sophisticated food cultures, with an extremely long documented history, probably at least as long as that of any other food tradition of similar variety. [383]Chinese cuisine, like all food cultures, has been shaped by the ingredients available and China has been particularly rich in the diversity of its plant life. Since ingredients are not the same everywhere, Chinese food acquired an indigenous character simply by virtue of those used. [384] Given the country’s size and population, there are, not surprisingly, huge regional variations in the character of Chinese food; indeed, it is more appropriate to speak of Chinese cuisines rather than a single tradition, with four schools often identified, namely Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Guangdong; and sometimes eight, with the addition of Hunan, Fujian, Anhui and Zhejiang; or even ten, with the further addition of Beijing and Shanghai. [385] From very early on, Chinese cuisine incorporated foreign foodstuffs — for example, wheat, sheep and goat from Western Asia in the earliest times, Indonesian spices in the fifth century, and maize and sweet potato from North America from the early seventeenth century — all of which helped to shape the food tradition. [386] The preparation of Chinese food involves, at its heart, a fundamental division between fan — grains and other starch foods — and ts’ai — vegetable and meat dishes. A balanced meal must involve the requisite amount of fan and ts’ai.

The Chinese way of eating is characterized by flexibility and adaptability, a function of the knowledge the Chinese have acquired about their wild plant resources. When threatened by poor harvests and famine, people would explore anything edible in order to stay alive. Many strange ingredients such as wood ears and lily buds, and delicacies such as shark fins, were discovered in this way and subsequently became an integral part of the Chinese diet. Chinese cuisine is also abundantly rich in preserved foods, another consequence of the need to find a means of survival during famines and the bleak winters of northern China. [387] The Chinese attitude towards food is intimately bound up with the notion of health and the importance of eating healthily, the underlying principles of which, based on the yin- yang distinction, are specific to Chinese culture. [388] Arguably few cultures are as food-orientated as the Chinese, who, whether rich or poor, take food extremely seriously, more so even than the French. [389] For thousands of years food has occupied a pivotal position in Chinese life. The importance of the kitchen in the emperor’s palace is amply demonstrated by the personnel roster recorded in Zhou li (the chronicle, or rites, of the Zhou dynasty, which ruled 1122- 256 BC). Out of almost 4,000 people who had the responsibility of running the emperor’s residential quarters, 2,271 of them handled food and wine. [390] While a standard greeting in English is ‘How are you?’ the Chinese equivalent is not infrequently ‘Have you eaten?’ K. C. Chang suggests that ‘the Chinese have shown inventiveness in [food] perhaps for the simple reason that food and eating are among things central to the Chinese way of life and part of the Chinese ethos.’ [391] Jacques Gernet argues, with less restraint, that ‘there is no doubt that in this sphere China has shown a greater inventiveness than any other civilization.’ [392]

To this picture we should add Chinese tea. No one is quite sure when tea-drinking in China began. It was already highly developed during the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) but it certainly dates back much earlier than that. Chinese tea culture is as sophisticated, multifarious, discerning and serious as European wine culture. A traditional tea-house has no equivalent in Western culture; the diversity of teas on offer is bewildering, the ways of preparing and imbibing are intricate, the rituals elaborate, and the surroundings often fine. Although coffee is becoming more popular, tea remains overwhelmingly the national drink. [393] With the growing appetite for things Chinese, it seems likely that Chinese tea-houses will become a common sight in many Western cities before too long.

It seems faintly absurd, therefore, to suggest that Chinese food (or drink, indeed) is being Westernized by the likes of McDonald’s. Of course, Chinese food has been influenced by the West, for example in terms of ingredients (the chillies characteristic of Sichuan food were originally introduced by the Spanish), but the impact has been very limited. The exceptional attachment of the Chinese to their food — in contrast to some other aspects of their culture, like clothing and architecture, which they have been largely prepared to relinquish — is illustrated by the fact that overseas Chinese communities, from South-East Asia to North America, continue to eat Chinese food as their main diet. [394]

Japanese food has been subject to rather greater Western influence. Japan abounds with homespun, Western-based food, much of which was invented in the wake of the Meiji Restoration. The Japanese elite sought to imitate French cuisine in the late nineteenth century, and after the First World War Western dishes began to enter middle-class kitchens, albeit in a highly indi genized form. Essentially, foreign dishes were accommodated into the Japanese meal pattern as side dishes — thereby also mimicking the ways in which Japanese society accepted, and also cordoned off, foreign influences more generally. [395] According to Katarzyna Cwiertka:

The basic rules concerning the blending of Japanese and Western foodstuffs, seasonings, and cooking techniques were set around the third decade of the twentieth century and have continued to be followed to this day, as Japanese cooks carry on with the adaptation of foreign elements into the Japanese context. Some combinations catch on to eventually become integral parts of the Japanese diet. Others are rejected, but they may reappear again a few decades later, advocated as new and fashionable. [396]

While the languages of East Asia are still overwhelmingly spoken within the region but not outside, this is not true of its food. Poor migrants have taken their food with them — Chinese restaurants, for example, have been the mainstay business of Chinese migrants, certainly in the early decades of settlement, as any Chinatown in the world will testify. While European food had only a limited impact on East Asia, mainly as a result of colonialism, reverse migration, from East Asia to the West, much of it over the last forty years, has enjoyed far greater culinary influence. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean and Malaysian restaurants — and, of course, Indian — have become a familiar sight in the West. [397] Over the last twenty-five years, Japanese food has become very popular on the West Coast of the United States, leading to the creation of new Japanese-American hybrid dishes like the California roll. [398]

Rather than the Westernization of East Asian eating habits, it would be more appropriate to speak of the reverse, the Asianization of the Western diet. The reason has much to do with migration but is also a consequence of the sheer richness and quality of many cuisines in the region when compared with the great majority of their counterparts in Europe and North America. Take the case of Britain, the world’s greatest colonizer, whose own food culture can only be described, in its contemporary state, as impoverished and threadbare. The vacuum that was British cuisine after the Second World War has largely been filled by a myriad of foreign influences, in the first instance European, especially Italian and French, but also Asian, notably Indian and Chinese. As a consequence, its cuisine has become a hybrid: in the realm of food, Britain resembles a developing country, retaining something of its own while borrowing extensively from elsewhere. The same can be said of the United States, though of course it started life as a European hybrid in the first place. All cuisines in the era of globalization are becoming more hybrid, but the extent of this should not be exaggerated. In East Asia food remains essentially indigenous and only hybrid at the margins, with the obvious exception of a multiracial country like Malaysia, where there has been enormous cross-fertilization in food between the Malays, Chinese and Indians, resulting in a very distinctive national cuisine.

Politics and Power

It has been widely assumed in the West that all political systems are gravitating, or at least over time will gravitate, towards a similar kind of polity, one characterized by Western-style democracy. There is also a view, based on a belief in the universal relevance of Western history, experience and practice, that power is exercised, or should be exercised, in broadly the same way everywhere. In fact, the nature of political power differs widely from one society to another. [399] Rather than speaking of a political system — with its abstract, machine-like connotations — it is more fruitful to think in terms of a political culture. The reason for this is simple: politics is rooted in, and specific to, each culture. It is, moreover, profoundly parochial. A businessman may ply his trade and skills across many different national borders, a renowned academic can lecture at universities all around the world, but a politician’s gift, in terms of building a popular support base and the exercise of power, is rooted narrowly and specifically in the national: the skills and charisma don’t travel in the same way, they are crafted and chiselled for the local audience, shaped by the intimate details of the national culture. Of course, particular leaders of major nations may be admired and appreciated across national boundaries, as Margaret Thatcher was in the 1980s, and Barack Obama presently is, and Vladimir Putin was, interestingly, in China in the noughties, but that is an entirely different matter from building a domestic base and governing a particular country.

There is a profound difference between the nature of power in Western societies and East Asian societies. In the former, it is driven by the quest for individual autonomy and identity. At the centre of East Asian culture — both North-East Asian (in other words Confucian-based culture) and South-East Asian — is the individual’s desire for a group identity: the individual finds affirmation and recognition not in their own individual identity but in being part of a group; it is through the membership of a group that an individual finds security and meaning. Further, Western governance rests, in theory at least, on the notion of utility: that government is required to deliver certain benefits to the electorate in return for their support. East Asian polities are different. Historically the function of government in East Asia has been more opaque, with, in contrast to the West, a separation between the concepts of power and responsibility: it was believed that there were limits to what a government could achieve, that other forces largely beyond human control determined outcomes, and that the relationship between cause and effect was complex and elusive. Rather than being based on utility, power was seen as an end value in itself, as intimately bound up with the collective well-being of society. Government had an essentially paternalistic role and the people saw themselves in a relationship of dependency. Although, under the pressures of modernization and economic growth, societies have been obliged to become more utilitarian — as the idea of the developmental state suggests — the traditional ways of thinking about government remain very strong. [400] This is reflected in the persistence of paternalistic one-party government in many states in the region, even where, as in Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, there are regular elections.

Although these generalizations apply to both South-East and North-East Asia, there are marked differences between the two. Here I will concentrate on the Confucian-based societies of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. The Chinese were extremely unusual in that from very early on they came to see government in primarily secular terms. Rather than presenting itself as the expression of divine authority, Confucian rule was based on the idea of an ethical order. Rulers were required to govern in accordance with the teachings of Confucius and were expected to set the highest moral standards. [401] There was an elaborate political hierarchy that presumed and required an ascending ladder of virtue on the part of office-holders. The political structure was seen as synonymous with the social order, the overall objective being a harmonious and balanced community. [402] These principles informed Chinese governance in varying degrees from the Qin through to the fall of the Qing.

The model of both society and government was based on the family, an institution intimately familiar to everyone. The individual was seen as part of society and the state in the same way as he or she belonged to his or her own family. The Confucian family was possessed of two key characteristics. The first was filial piety, the duty of the offspring to respect the authority of the father who, in return, was required to take care of the family. As the state was modelled on the family, the father was also the role model for the state, which, in dynastic times, meant the emperor. Second, although the Chinese were not by and large religious, they shared with other Confucian societies a transcendental belief in ancestral spirits: that one’s ancestors were permanently present. Deference towards one’s ancestors was enacted through the ritual of ancestral worship, which served to emphasize the continuity and lineage of the family and the relatively humble nature of its present living members. The belief in ancestral spirits encouraged a similar respect for and veneration of the state as an immortal institution which represented the continuity of Chinese civilization. The importance of the family in Chinese culture can be gleaned from the special significance — far greater than in Western culture — that attaches to the family name, which always comes before the given name. [403]

Socialization via the family was and remains a highly disciplining process in Confucian societies. Children learn to appreciate that everything has its place, including them. People learn about their role and duties as citizens as an extension of their familial responsibilities. It is through the family that people learn to defer to a collectivity, that the individual is always secondary to the group. Unlike Western societies, which, historically at least, have tended to rely on guilt through Christian teaching as a means of constraining and directing individual behaviour, Confucian societies rest on shame and ‘loss of face’. Discipline in Confucian societies is internal to the individual, based on the socialization process in the family, rather than externally induced through religious teaching, as in the West, though that tradition has weakened in an increasingly secular Europe. [404]

Such is the power of this sense of belonging — to one’s own family, but then by extension to society, the nation and the state — that it has resulted in a strong sense of attachment to, and affinity with, one’s race and nation — and, by the same token, a rejection of foreigners as ‘barbarians’, or ‘devils’, or the Other. All the Confucian countries share a biological conception of citizenship. The strong sense of patriotism that characterizes each of these societies — China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam — has generally been ascribed to a reaction to overbearing Western pressure, including colonialism. But this is only part of the picture, and the rather less important part: the power of identity, the rejection of outsiders and the strength of native racism is primarily a consequence of the nature of the indigenous process of socialization. [405]

The role of the family is to provide security, support and cohesion for its members. In Confucian societies, in other words, government is modelled on an institution whose focus was not on the achievement of external goals but on its own well-being, self-maintenance and self-perpetuation. It is not surprising, therefore, that a powerful feature of these societies has been the stress on unity and stability and on continuity, cohesion and solidarity. Confucian societies, thus, have a rather different conception of government to that which we are familiar with in the West, where the state is viewed as an essentially artificial construct, an external institution that people seek to hold to account, which they view with a certain suspicion, whose powers they constantly seek to define, limit and constrain. For the Chinese — and the same can broadly be said of the other Confucian societies — the state is seen as a natural and intrinsic part of society, as part of the wider common purpose and well-being. The state, like the family, is subject to neither codification nor constraint. The Chinese state has never been regarded in a narrowly political way, but more broadly as a source of meaning, moral behaviour and order. That it should be accorded such a universal role is a consequence of the fact that it is so deeply rooted in the culture that it is seen as part of the natural order of things. [406]

It is difficult for Westerners to appreciate and grasp the nature of Confucian political culture because it is so different from what they are familiar with; moreover, Westerners, accustomed to running the world for so long, are not well versed in understanding and recognizing difference. East Asian polities, as a result, are usually seen only in a very superficial light. Japan is regarded as democratic because it has elections and competing parties; yet the Japanese system works entirely differently from those in the West. Post- 1949 China has been explained overwhelmingly in terms of its Communist government, with a consequent failure to understand the continuity between the Communist regime and the long thread of Chinese history. In fact, we should not be surprised either by the highly idiosyncractic nature of Japanese politics or the umbilical cord that links Communist rule and dynastic rule. Both are examples of the way in which politics is rooted in culture. [407]

Given that East Asian polities operate by very different customs and practices to those of the West, can we draw any conclusions as to their merits and demerits? This is a tricky question, for Westerners, however broad-minded they may be, inevitably tend to apply Western criteria. They are inclined to see dependency as a negative, while East Asians veer towards the opposite view and see it as a positive. Who is right? It is impossible to make a judgement. The downside of East Asian societies might be seen as a tendency, given the strength of dependency and the paternalistic conception of government, towards authoritarianism and one-party government. On the other hand, such paternalistic leadership also has certain strengths. Because government and leaders enjoy a different kind of trust, they are given much more latitude to change direction and policies. They are not hemmed in and constrained in the same manner as Western leaders. In some ways East Asian political leaders are also more accessible and more approachable because they view their accountability to society in a more holistic way and people take a similar attitude towards them. Their greater all-round authority, rooted in the symbiotic relationship between paternalism and dependency, can also enable them to take a longer-term attitude towards society and its needs.

The highly distinctive characteristics of East Asian polities may be rooted in history, but are they declining with modernization? In some ways they are getting stronger. As the ideology of anti-colonialism has weakened, there has, if anything, been a reversion to more traditional familial attitudes. Moreover, while the family itself is changing — in China, it is far less patriarchal than previously — it remains very different to the Western family, especially in terms of values and attitudes: [408] indeed, family customs have been amongst the slowest of all Asian institutions to change. Such is the profundity of the forces that have served to shape East Asian politics that it is impossible to envisage these societies somehow losing their political distinctiveness. [409]