Asian Power and Politics

The Cultural Dimensions of Authority

Lucian W. Pye, Mary W. Pye

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 1988
• Print ISBN: 9780674049796, 9780674049789
• eBook ISBN: 9780674254411
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In a major new book, Lucian W. Pye reconceptualizes Asian political development as a product of cultural attitudes about power and authority. He contrasts the great traditions of Confucian East Asia with the Southeast Asian cultures and the South Asian traditions of Hinduism and Islam, and explores the national differences within these larger civilizations.

Breaking with modern political theory, Pye believes that power differs profoundly from one culture to another. In Asia the masses of the people are group-oriented and respectful of authority, while their leaders are more concerned with dignity and upholding collective pride than with problem-solving. As culture decides the course of political development, Pye shows how Asian societies, confronted with the task of setting up modern nation-states, respond by fashioning paternalistic forms of power that satisfy their deep psychological craving for security. This new paternalism may appear essentially authoritarian to Western eyes, but Pye maintains that it is a valid response to the people's needs and will ensure community solidarity and strong group loyalties. He predicts that we are certain to see emerging from Asia's accelerating transformation some new version of modern society that may avoid many of the forms of tension common to Western civilization but may also produce a whole new set of problems.

This book revitalizes Asian political studies on a plane that comprehends the large differences between Asia and the West and at the same time is sensitive to the subtle variations among the many Asian cultures. Its comparative perspective will provide indispensable insights to anyone who wishes to think more deeply about the modern Asian states.

1 Asia and Theories of Development

ON THE FACE OF IT, the mere idea of treating Asia as a single entity is absurd. Knowledgeable people realize that “Asia” is only a geographical expression, that the continent abounds in diversities, and that the peoples there should never be confused with one another. Only relics of the nineteenth century and the hopelessly uninformed would lump Asians together and speak of “Orientals,” or of “Eastern thought.” Asia certainly is as rich in its differences as is Europe.

Yet, we do speak of Europe as though, hidden behind its diversity, there lies some common, shared quality which justifies our thinking of Europe as a single entity. We agree that to say that something is “European” has meaning. But a similar generalization in regard to Asia is quickly ruled out as unjustifiable. Few will question that there is a European civilization; and although the French, English, Germans, Italians, and the rest may speak their separate tongues, they do share the legacies of Greece and Rome, of a common Christendom, and all that makes up the Judeo-Christian tradition. Behind the manifest variations of Asia, however, lies not one civilization but different root civilizations, the Sinic and the Hindu, and also the Muslim and the Buddhist traditions. Asia has a more varied past than Europe and therefore has not the same sense of a common descent.

Conventional wisdom, holding that at times it is appropriate to minimize Europe’s diversities and concentrate on its common heritage, judges Asia’s differences to be unmanageable. Comparisons within Europe are thus considered justifiable, while attempts to compare Asian countries are like “comparing apples and oranges.”

Yet, with all this acknowledged, the pull of comparison in Asia persists. People do want to know how India and China are doing compared with each other. We find it natural to ask whether the “Japanese model,” and now more recently the “South Korean-Singapore model,” will be relevant for other parts of Asia. The “Chinese revolution” and then the successes of Hanoi led some people to talk of a general pattern of “Asian peasant rebellions.” Others have found significance, and barely suppressed satisfaction, in contrasting the “hard” cultures of Confucian East Asia with the “soft” cultures of Hindu India and Buddhist Southeast Asia.

If we reflect on those comparisons within Asia which come most naturally, it soon becomes apparent that they share one quality: it is not that they are variations on a common past, as with the countries of Europe, but rather that they share similar hopes for the future. The common element in Asia is that it is a continent in pursuit of economic growth, national power, and all that can be lumped together under the general label of modernization. The unity of Europe lies in its history; the unity of Asia is in the more subtle, but no less real, shared consciousness of the desirability of change and of making a future different from the past.

Furthermore, in varying degrees, Asia’s desire for change, largely a concern of the elite, came from a single source—Western technological civilization. Although the West came to Asia in a number of guises, creating different colonial traditions and different perceptions of danger and opportunity, the extraordinary historical fact is that, in spite of the trauma of that interlude of variegated Western challenges, enlightened Asians have been able to penetrate the Western masquerade of diversity and grasp at some of the most unifying features of Western secular civilization. In the process Asians have moved beyond the phase of seeking to become Westernized and have come to the stage of striving for modernization. Japan, as the pacesetter, in its “low posture” style, has slipped past the stage of self-conscious concern about becoming Westernized and has quietly joined the ranks of the most modernized, so much a part of the West that it has become conventional to dispense with the phrase “the West and Japan” and to speak instead of the “advanced industrial societies,” by which everyone understands that Japan is to be classed with Europe and North America. Other rapidly changing Asian countries are not far behind Japan, and consequently the very idea of becoming Westernized will lose meaning as we think of the more generalized concept of a world culture.¹

In Defense of Development Theory

The objection may be raised that in identifying the unity of Asia by its common pursuit of modernization we have done little more than to say that Asia’s diversity is encompassed by the larger category of societies variously called the “Third World,” the “developing” or “emerging” nations, or simply the “LDCs,” which presumably share this same concern for achieving modernization. After all, if the criterion is “modernization,” how does Asia differ from Africa and Latin America? Moreover, isn’t the concept of modernization, which was popular in the 1950s and 1960s, now somewhat tarnished, if not discredited, and hardly worthy of being the central concept of a serious study?

These are two valid questions which call for sober answers, particularly since both questions are in a sense awkwardly related. It is true that the development or modernization theories created in the 1950s and 1960s did lump together Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Yet it is also true that an important reason for dissatisfaction with those theories was precisely the fact that they were stretched too thin by being applied to all three continents. From the vantage point of the 1980s it is evident that in essence the earlier modernization theories had a close empirical fit with the experiences of Asia but not with those of either Africa or Latin America. It is apparent now that the postcolonial African political systems generally lacked the blend of nationalism and earnest commitment to modernization that was characteristic of Asia. As for Latin America, it is an inappropriate stretching of the imagination to classify that continent’s well-established countries as “newly emerging” states, as though they were just breaking away from colonial rule. South and Central American countries have had long histories of independence and have, over time, molded their own distinctive political and social systems. They are not at all comparable to those Asian states whose terminal phases of colonialism pointed them in the direction of elite-guided social and economic change which was intensified by the drive of newfound nationalism.² Nor are they comparable to China or Japan, which from the moment they were exposed to the dangers of Western colonial domination sought to gain national strength and economic security by adopting modernizing technologies.³

Indeed, reflection on the problems raised by Latin America helps to clarify some of the inappropriate criticisms of modernization theories, at least as applied to Asia. First of all, Latin America was subsumed under general discussions of development partly in response to policy concerns rather than intellectual ones. Specifically, the Kennedy administration’s decision to oppose the spread of Castroism by initiating the Alliance for Progress expressed Washington’s belief that Latin America should be ready for the reforms that might put it on the road to progress and modernization. But it was soon apparent that most of Latin America was not committed to such objectives. Furthermore, the policy incentives of the Latin Americans, even when directed toward change, revealed assumptions and desires quite different from those of the modernizing Asians. For example, Raul Prebisch, and then increasingly the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, called for “trade, not aid,” an appeal which sounded to Asian ears downright antidevelopment, if not reactionary. From India to South Korea, Asian leaders counted heavily on Western, and especially United States, aid and downplayed the importance of trade, even though, paradoxically, trade would turn out in the end to be vital for their development. The issue for the Asians was only that they wanted no strings tied to their aid.

The differences between Asia and Latin America became even more manifest when certain Latin American intellectuals revived, in a distorted form, the old Leninist theory about the “colonies and semi-colonies,” and called it dependencia, or “dependency theory.” The enthusiasm of Latin Americans for that theory and the rejection of it by Asian intellectuals illustrate the difference between the two continents with respect to development. Whatever the merits of dependency theory relating to Latin America—and we can leave it to others to explain why some Latin American intellectuals embrace such a demeaning and despairing theory—it is unmistakably clear that the theory is not only irrelevant but wrong with respect to Asia. All of the dramatically successful economies of Asia have grown as the result of their close involvement with what the dependency school chooses to call the “world economy.” Today, newly industrializing states, including the People’s Republic of China, compete vigorously in wooing multinational corporations, and none has lost control over its own destiny. By contrast, the stagnation and impotence which the theory associates with “dependency” are to be found in Asia only in those countries that, at least for a time, have sought “autonomy” and isolation from the world economy. The Chinese during the Cultural Revolution period paid a high price to learn this fact; and, as a new convert to the benefits of dealing with multinationals, the Deng Xiaoping regime has declared, in the words of the Beijing Review of March 1982, “Not a single country in the world, no matter what its political system, has ever modernized with a closed-door policy.”

Instead of fearing what the dependency theorists call the workings of “monopoly capitalism,” the five governments of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) energetically strive to outdo one another in attracting foreign capital and technology so as to provide more interesting and remunerative jobs for their people and more revenues for themselves—a competition which led Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee of Singapore to say that the three abominations his country would not tolerate were “hippies, long-haired boys, and critics of multinational corporations,” and while he may have had tongue in cheek about the first two, he was certainly deadly serious about the last. Sri Lanka, after two decades of stagnation, began in the late 1970s to try to follow the ASEAN lead, and in 1980 the Chinese Communists went to the extraordinary length of establishing “special economic zones” for foreign enterprises. Even India, long suspicious of foreign firms and committed to import-substitution policies, began in the early 1980s to open, albeit haltingly, its economy a bit—in part because Indian firms had reached the point of wanting to become multinationals and hence New Delhi had to be more reciprocating, and in part because it wanted to follow the successfully developing Asians in their export promotion tactic.

By contrast, Burma, which has resolutely shielded itself from the reach of the world economy, has stagnated, and its people have suffered a decline in their standard of living as the government has stubbornly followed the “Burmese path to socialism.” Nevertheless, by the early 1980s the “black market” had grown to such proportions and was so successful in providing consumer goods that the Burmese peasants once again became interested in producing for the market, and consequently the country had a surprising 6 percent a year growth in GNP.

Thus, ironically, at the very time when there was widespread criticism of and disillusionment with earlier theories of political and economic development, events in Asia were suggesting that possibly those theories had been too cautious. During the twenty years of the sixties and seventies, the peoples of East and Southeast Asia were living through the longest period of rapidly rising economic growth ever experienced in human history. Aside from Japan, which had average growth rates of 9.8 percent and 6 percent, respectively, for the two decades, the so-called gang of four—South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong—performed at 9.3 percent, and the ASEAN countries all had rates of over 8 percent.⁴

Although the problems of poverty remained, sectors of India’s economy were growing at almost comparable rates. The “green revolution” in the Punjab and elsewhere made the country for a time more than self-sufficient in grain. In terms of human capital, India developed the third largest pool of engineers in the world, and it began vigorously to export engineering equipment and machine tools. Sri Lanka by 1980 was beginning to follow the ASEAN example of opening its economy for investment, and even the “basket case,” Bangladesh, did better than merely survive.

Ironically, while these advances were taking place, public attention in the United States was caught up with the drama of China’s announced Four Modernizations program, and the impression was created that this newly opening country was making even more rapid progress than the rest of Asia. Although China still has tremendous problems and progress will be slow in a country of one billion people, it is significant that after decades of experimentation with more radical approaches the Chinese leadership has finally come to the conclusion that development calls for technically sounder methods. China is thus trying, to some degree, to fall in line with the rest of Asia.⁵

The misfortune that the disillusionment with political theory coincided with a remarkable period of Asian development may be compounded by the possibility that by the time scholars are ready once more to examine seriously Asian events, the problems of Asian countries will have been lifted to a higher and more difficult plane. This is because in the year 2000 the already mushrooming number of Asian babies will have reached employment age; and this means, according to the calculations of Myron Weiner, that there will be some eighty million Asians a year seeking jobs. And, of course, improvements in education will mean that they will want significant careers rather than just to follow ancient pursuits.

The American public, understandably, sometimes has problems separating rhetoric from facts about that still distant continent, and hence it is not so surprising that, according to polls, a majority of Americans in 1980 believed that China had a higher standard of living than Singapore, South Korea, or Taiwan. The public’s problem of getting a clear picture of the condition of Asia has been extensively documented by pollsters who have systematically questioned Americans about their knowledge of Asian countries. In a 1980 Gallup poll done for Potomac Associates and reported by William Watts, a national sample of Americans found it most appropriate to characterize “Asia” with the four adjectives or phrases “crowded with too many people,” “underdeveloped,” “political unrest,” and “dirty, with poor sanitation”; and only 4 percent saw Asians as “peace loving” while only 3 percent said they were “well dressed”—and this at a time when the scruffy look was de rigueur on American campuses. Understandably, Vietnam and North Korea were the two most “disliked” countries in Asia, and Japan was the most “liked,” ranking internationally with West Germany and New Zealand, while India was less liked than either China or Taiwan, thus confirming Harold Isaacs’s earlier finding that Americans prefer Chinese to Indians by a wide margin. More significant was the amount of ignorance about Asia unearthed by the pollsters. For example, more than a third of the sample did not know that the Philippines had once been an American colony; most thought that Russians were more “hard working” than either South Koreans or Taiwanese, that the PRC was more politically stable than Singapore, and that Vietnam was the most unstable country in Asia. Most people admitted that their knowledge came largely from television, both news and special feature programs, including such situation comedies as M*A*S*H. At the same time, however, the survey showed that traditional stereotypes about Asia are still vivid in the American mind. That news reports have contradicted these stereotypes has not created any particular tensions or problems of cognitive dissonance for Americans, apparently because few feel the need to get the picture of Asia straight. Therefore in the 1980s Asia remains slightly mysterious and in many respects still confusing to Americans.⁶

Western Theories and Asian Facts

The suggestion that Asian developments, blurred as they have been in American perceptions, provide substantial support for earlier theories of modernization and development is itself ironic because in the past Western social science theories have generally not stood up well to Asian evidence. It is worth noting at the outset of this study of Asia that all manner of convincing theories developed to explain Western experiences, and judged to encapsulate universal truths, have been repeatedly confounded by Asian facts. Indeed, there is no more humbling, but also challenging, way to begin a study of Asian developments than to take note of the fate of such theories in the East.

For example, even as Karl Marx was constructing his grand theories about social transformations according to his laws of historical materialism, he sensed that they would not hold up with respect to the East. As Myron Weiner, following the analysis of Shlomo Avineri, has pointed out, Marx himself was more sensitive to the uniqueness of Asia than most subsequent “Marxists” have been. “Thus, Marxists speak of feudalism in India, when Marx asserted that feudalism did not exist in the Asiatic mode of production; Marxists condemn imperialism, while Marx himself was concerned with the ‘regenerating’ as well as ‘destructive’ elements of the British role in India; and while Marxists seek to show how the distribution of economic wealth determines the distribution of political power, Marx himself emphasized the autonomous character of state power and the ways in which political power affected cultural, social structures and economic relations …” in Asia.⁷

Marx’s understanding of the East stemmed in part from other European thinkers who had earlier recognized some of the distinctive characteristics of Asian societies. Montesquieu, for example, in The Spirit of Laws, presented “Oriental despotism” as an ideal type that had as its key value fear, in which there was no secure private property, the ruler relied upon religion rather than law, and the entire system was essentially static because of the dominant role of custom and taboos.⁸ His version of Oriental despotism also, paradoxically, led to a high degree of equality in that everyone was vulnerable to the whims of the despot. Interestingly, it was Adam Smith, and subsequently John S. Mill, who, before Marx, identified the key role that irrigation played in A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Asia and Theories of Development
• 2 The Evolution of Asian Concepts of Power
• 3 East Asia: Varieties of Confucian Authority
• 4 Southeast Asia: From God-Kings to the Power of Personal Connections
• 5 The South Asian Subcontinent: Hindu and Muslim Power and the Rewards of Narcissism
• 6 The Riddle of Japan: The Combining of Competition and Consensus
• 7 China: The Illusion of Omnipotence
• 8 Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam: Forms of Aggressive Confucianism
• 9 Malaysia: Confrontation of Two Incompatible Cultures
• 10 Islamic Power: The Pulls of Reformism and Fundamentalism
• 11 The Substance of Asian Power: Formal Structures and Informal Relations
• 12 Paternalistic Authority and the Triumph of Dependency
• Notes
• Index