Implications For
"Asian Values"

"Asian Values" is one code term for the idea that values like human rights have no place in Asian traditions, and that such values are not universal at all, but only Western. It follows that their application to Asian governments is an imposition of an alien idea, and is completely invalid.

One early and extreme version of this position, championed by the late John Fairbank, was that the Chinese language does not even contain a word for "freedom," so that the very concept of freedom is alien to China. Even the slightest acquaintance with Chinese literature will show how false it is, but nobody in the West has the slightest acquaintance with Chinese literature, so that claim went largely unchallenged. For details, see that page of the Ask WSP section.

That was then. One ground on which this issue is currently being fought is the golden age of Chinese philosophy: the Warring States period. The Project's work on the texts of that period directly affects the evidence for that argument. For a summary, see our lecture on Warring States Citizenship.

The upshot is that the "Asian Values" claim well describes the attitudes of current totalitarian Asian governments, but it lies about the presence of certain key concepts, such as freedom, in Asian traditions. Those values have been suppressed, rather than missing altogether. There is a difference.

Here, for reference by those interested, are some landmark statements in the "Asian Values" debate of recent years, along with some general information sources:

• Bangkok Declaration on Human Rights, 1993
• Lee Kuan Yew, Culture is Destiny (Foreign Affairs v73 #2, 1994)
  • quotes Fairbank et al, East Asia (1973) 44-46
• Kim Dae Jung, Is Culture Destiny? (Foreign Affairs v73 #6, 1994)
• Amartya Sen, Our Culture, Their Culture (NR, 1 Apr 96)
• Lee Teng-hui, We Must Defend Ourselves (Newsweek, 20 May 96)
  • "During the Warring States period . . . "
• Li Xiaorong, "Asian Values" and Human Rights (1996)
• W J F Jenner, China and the Irrelevance of Freedom (19 Sept 96)
• Amartya Sen, Human Rights and Asian Values (NR, 14 July 97)
  • "What Lee Kuan Yew and Le Peng Don't Understand"
• Hong Kong University Research Group Page (April 1998)
• Anthony Milner, What's Happened to Asian Values? (1999)
• Richard Rorty: The Communitarian Impulse (Symposium, 5 Feb 99)
• R Peerenboom: Rorty and the China Challenge (PEW v50 #1, 2000)
  • Richard Rorty: Response to Randall Peerenboom (p90)
• Human Rights in China web site (ongoing)
• Chinese Human Rights Reader (Angle and Svensson, 2001)

   

  

24 April 2000 / Contact The Project / Exit to Implications Page