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Event Report

Asianism Retold is a program to understand the values that shape Asia’s influence in Geopolitics and Development. Asianism Retold is based on economic, military, and social models of the world. It aims at providing voice to the Asians and to do so a series of round table is initiated for sharpening the focus on Asianism.

Dr Parag Khanna: The Future Is Asian

Dr Khanna is a young, dynamic global strategist intellectual and best-selling author. Dr Khanna states that Asian geopolitics does not actually follow the past present or future, the kinds of prisms that dominate western international relations theory. Over the last 30 years since the collapse of Soviet Union, there has been a fuller Asian expansion that had led Asia to reconnect with itself with the various regions and sub regions. The nations of Asia have expanded their trade relationships very significantly with the first instance being the commodities super cycle. Asia is becoming a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Today the Intra-Asian trade accounts for 60% of Asian trade. Asia represents 50% of the global GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and about more than 50% of the population of the world. There has also been an increase in density of the regional diplomatic system of Asia like trade, AIIB which is a rapid growing multilateral body. Three Asian values were stated by the speaker: first, technocratic governance; second, mixed capitalism; third social conservatism. While concluding the speech Dr Khanna states, a transition should be done appreciating Asia based upon its own internal dynamics. Dr Khanna states that most of the population of the world resides in Asia so he states, Humanity’s future is Asia’s future.

Dr Rebecca Chunghee Kim: Value Oriented Inclusive Leadership in Asia

Dr Rebecca is a distinguished professor in Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan. She was also a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting professor at Edinburgh University UK. Dr Kim view is focused on east Asia such as Japan, Korea- South Korea and China. Dr Kim believes if we want Asia to lead, we may talk about economic growth, the engagement with other continents but we should not forget our identity and our values which are a contributing factor for the development of Asia and the world. So, she proposes Value-Oriented Inclusive Leadership in Asia. She talks about distortions of capitalism with first being greed is good capitalism; second quarterly capitalism; third elitist capitalism; fourth volume-oriented capitalism and lastly on pattern capitalism. Now she states that in the post pandemic world we must think about capitalism in a new context in which she talks about some prospects like new leadership shift, role of Asia in that leadership and lastly role of Asian business. She also talks about Creating Shared Value (CSV) of Asia. She mentions creating business value as a strategy and at the same time business should create a social value thus creating shared values. This is what we can call is the Asian CSV model. At the end she states that Asian values are not recognized properly or worse misinterpreted which is a hindrance for Asia to go for the leadership aspect it wants. And then we must focus on endeavors for sustainable development of global society by using “Asian value oriented inclusive leadership.

Amb. Bilahari Kausikan: The Geopolitics of Human Rights in Asia

Ambassador Bilahari was a former permanent secretary at the ministry of social foreign affairs Singapore. He was the chairperson to the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He also served as an ambassador to the UN. Amb. Bilahari states values are instruments for geopolitical ends. He quoted David Easton’s definition of Politics. He believes that ideas never prevail merely based on their inherent merits they must be fought for, the fights ae conditioned by their political and historical context and cannot be fully understood devoid of their context. All ideas are deployed for specific purposes. The Asian values debate grew out of the specific circumstances of the end of the cold war. He says that history and culture assert a profound influence on social political and economic development. The beginning of the 1990s was a period of enormous potential geopolitical complications. Amb. Then continued to talk about the Clinton presidency and how China and US were beginning to eye each other warily. We are today in a period of great geopolitical complication in which US- China’s strategic competition is a new structural reality of international relations. He continues to talk about how people have labelled the competition over dominance over the single global system as “New Cold War” but states that it is a lazy attempt to label it so. He also talks about how different Asian countries have handled the pandemic well like Japan, South Korea, Singapore. He ends on the note that values and human rights are inherently political.

Dr Amitav Mukherjee: Are there Asian Values?

Dr Amitav was the former adviser to the Govt. of India, Ministry of Rural Development. He was also an executive Director, Development Tracks RTC, a knowledge enterprise in Delhi. He was also a senior expert in UNESCAP. Dr Amitav says that he will confine himself to values per se, he then goes on to define values. He states that values emerge out of long struggle of current customs usage practice and values are not static, values are dynamic. He then focuses on the concept of Samuel Huntington’s major civilizations. Then he states that for Huntington the central axis of world politics will be the conflict between western and non-western civilizations. It was “the west versus the rest.” Then he states that the prime tactical premise of Asian Values is cultural relativism, but this is a practical problem. The Asian values comprise of consensus, harmony, unit, and community whereas we cannot see this in the rest of the world but sometimes absence of these values means democracy, people expressing their views and opinions. Great leaders like Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and Mr. Mahatir Mahamed were the main proponents of Asian Values Theory. Now Dr Amitav continues to talk about claims of Asian values theory. When we talk about values Asia is remarkably diverse with people living in different regions and following diverse cultures hence, they have different values. There are different values within the country. He then states that we need a heroic generalization to see such a large group of diverse people in terms of the positional view. Then he moves on to make a point by saying that whose values we are talking about when we talk about Asian values is it the values of nations, leaders, or people and then he continues to illustrate this point by referring to various constitutions of Asian countries.

Geeta Chandran: Dance as a way of life

Panelist Geeta is an Indian Classical dancer and artist. She has won various awards in the field of dance. She was unable to join the panel but shared her views through a visual medium which she calls dance a way of life. She states Asia is such a complex mystery. she explains the importance of Guru in Indian Classical Dance. She talks about various gestures that are carried on by the disciples of the Guru. She mentions that dance makes us humble. The dances of Asia are all earth bound unlike the dances of west that seek to be aesthetically crafted against the force of gravity. The Asian dances are all firmly grounded and are built integrating the force of gravity. The other Asian values that the arts yields are that we are seekers not of mere vidya learning but of Gyan which is comprehensive knowledge. Our search is determined by long-term goals of enlightenment and not short-term goals. She ends on the note that dance yields to us unique freedom where we can improvise and express our deepest selves in the way we want.

Prepared by Vaishnavi Sharma, Intern at NIICE, Nepal