The assumed opposition between Western and Asian values is more of a political than a cultural issue. I see no ‘clash of civilization’ of the kind imagined by Samuel Huntington impending in East Asia (although Singapore’s senior minister Lee Kuan Yew suggest there may be racialist undertones in America’s attitude toward a resurgent China). Cultural differences between East Asia and West are not the critical determinants of politics, economics, or manners. As societies get more complex, they must increasingly be ruled by compromise and majority rule if society is to become both free and orderly. And to the extent that countries (East or West) accept these consensual methods, their political cultures will converge.
As political cultures converge, the differences between countries will arise largely from the civic values that specific cultures prize, and also from the deliberate efforts that East Asia’s modernizers are making, to avoid the mistakes the early modernizers in the West made; for example, in failing to restrain the egotism of individualistic capitalism, and in allowing both the deterioration of family ties and the extreme secularism of society and of human life.
China must be incorporated peacefully into this Pax Pacifica. Apart from military reach, economic impact, and political muscle, a superpower must have a message of worldwide relevance derived from an inner moral code of its own, defining a ‘shared standard of conduct as an example to others.’ The Asia-Pacific as a community must impress on China that military reach, economic impact, and political muscle by themselves can no longer command respect. Respect must be earned and China can deserve the region’s respect only if it has a message that transforms power into a leadership that commands moral legitimacy. How China behaves in Hong Kong, in the South China Sea, on Taiwan, and in Korea will define for the Philippines its message to the region and the world. In the past, states moved effortlessly from economic strength to military power and then to imperialism. But today no state need aspire to hegemony, because it can attain its goal of wealth and prestige through peaceful commerce and integration in the community of nations. The long-term objective should be to replace security arrangements based on the military balance with mutual security based on economic cooperation (on mutually beneficial trade and investment). A Pax Pacifica must be founded on the stability imposed not by any hegemonic power but on the peace of virtual equals: the product of security cooperation that comes from reasoning together.
As political cultures converge, the differences between countries will arise largely from the civic values that specific cultures prize, and also from the deliberate efforts that East Asia’s modernizers are making, to avoid the mistakes the early modernizers in the West made; for example, in failing to restrain the egotism of individualistic capitalism, and in allowing both the deterioration of family ties and the extreme secularism of society and of human life.
China must be incorporated peacefully into this Pax Pacifica. Apart from military reach, economic impact, and political muscle, a superpower must have a message of worldwide relevance derived from an inner moral code of its own, defining a ‘shared standard of conduct as an example to others.’ The Asia-Pacific as a community must impress on China that military reach, economic impact, and political muscle by themselves can no longer command respect. Respect must be earned and China can deserve the region’s respect only if it has a message that transforms power into a leadership that commands moral legitimacy. How China behaves in Hong Kong, in the South China Sea, on Taiwan, and in Korea will define for the Philippines its message to the region and the world. In the past, states moved effortlessly from economic strength to military power and then to imperialism. But today no state need aspire to hegemony, because it can attain its goal of wealth and prestige through peaceful commerce and integration in the community of nations. The long-term objective should be to replace security arrangements based on the military balance with mutual security based on economic cooperation (on mutually beneficial trade and investment). A Pax Pacifica must be founded on the stability imposed not by any hegemonic power but on the peace of virtual equals: the product of security cooperation that comes from reasoning together.
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