06/01/98
Can Asians think?

By Mahbubani, Kishore

Magazine: The National Interest, Summer 1998

CAN ASIANS THINK?

THIS is obviously a sensitive question. In this age of political correctness that we live in, just imagine try (policy) of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Singapore. These are his personal views.

he uproar that could be caused if I went to Europe or Africa and asked, "Can Europeans think?" or "Can Africans think?" You have to be Asian to ask the question "Can Asians think?"[1]

Given its sensitivity, let me explain both the reasons why and the context in which I raise the issue. First, I believe that if one had to ask one single, key question that could determine the future of the globe, it could well be "Can Asians think?" In 1996 Asians already made up 3.5 billion out of a global population of over 5 billion (or about 70 percent of the world population). By conservative projections, the Asian portion of the world population will increase to 5.7 billion in 2050 out of a global population of 9.87 billion, while the populations of North America and Europe will remain relatively constant at 374 million and 721 million, respectively. Clearly in the past few centuries, Europe, and more recently North America, have carried the larger share of the global burden in advancing human civilization. By 2050, when Europeans and North Americans make up one-tenth instead of one-sixth of the world's population, would it be fair for the remaining 90 percent of mankind to expect this 10 percent to continue to bear this burden? Realistically, can the rest of the world continue to ride on the shoulders of the West? If Asians double in population in the next fifty years, will they be able to carry their fair share of this burden?

Second, I am not asking this question about individual Asians in terms of limited thinking abilities. Clearly, Asians can master alphabets, add two plus two to make four, and play chess. However, throughout history there have been examples of societies that produced brilliant individuals but yet experienced a lot of grief collectively. The classic example of this is Jewish society. Per capita, Jews have contributed more brilliant minds, from Einstein to Wittgenstein and from Disraeli to Kissinger, than any other society. Yet, as a society, they have suffered so much, especially in the past century or so. (Let me stress that I am not speaking about the travails of Israel in modern times. I am speaking of the period from 135 A.D. when the Jews were forced to leave Palestine to 1948 when Israel was born.) Will the same happen to Asian societies, or will they be able to think well and ensure a better future for themselves?

Third, the time scale in which I am posing this question is not one of days, weeks, months, years, or even decades. I am looking at the question from the time scale of centuries, especially since we stand two years away from the new millennium. Arguably, the future course of world history in the next few centuries, as I will explain later, will depend on how Asian societies think and perform.

Back then to the question: "Can Asians think?" In a multiple-choice examination format, there would be three possible answers: "Yes", "No", or "Maybe." Before we decide which choice to tick off, let me make a case for each answer.

No, They Cannot Think

I WILL START with the reasons for the "No" answer, if only to refute any critics who may suggest that the question itself is manifestly absurd. If one looks at the record of the past thousand years, one can make a very persuasive case that Asians, Asian societies that is, cannot think.

Let us look at where Asian societies were a thousand years ago, say in the year 998. Then, the Chinese and the Arabs (i.e., Confucian and Islamic civilizations) led the way in science and technology, medicine and astronomy. The Arabs adopted both the decimal and the numbers 0 to 9 from India, and they learned how to make paper from the Chinese. The world's first university was founded just over a thousand years ago, in the year 971, in Cairo. By contrast, Europe was then still in what are familiarly known as the "Dark Ages", which had begun when the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century. As Will Durant stunreed it up in The Age of Faith (1994):

Western Europe in the sixth century was a chaos of conquest, disintegration, and rebarbarization. Much of the classic culture survived, for the most part silent and hidden in a few monasteries and faillilies. But the physical and psychological foundations of social order had been so disturbed that centuries would be needed to restore them. Love of letters, devotion to art, the unity and continuity of culture, the cross-fertilization of communicating minds, fell before the convulsions of war, the perils of transport, the economies of poverty, the rise of vernaculars, the disappearance of Latin from the East and of Greek from the West.

Against this backdrop, it would have been sheer folly to predict at the time that in the second millennium Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations would slip into the backwaters of history while Europe would rise to be the first civilization ever to dominate the entire globe. But that, of course, is precisely what happened.

It did not come about suddenly. Until about the sixteenth century, the more advanced societies of Asia, while they had lost their primacy, were still on a par with those of Europe and there was no definite indication that Europe would leap far ahead. At that time, Europe's relative weakness was more apparent than its strength. It was not the most fertile area of the world, nor was it particularly populous--important criteria by the measure of the day, when the soil was the source of most wealth, and human and animal muscle of most power. Europe exhibited no pronounced advantages in the fields of culture, mathematics, engineering, navigation, or other technologies. It was also a deeply fragmented continent, consisting of a hodgepodge of petty kingdoms, principalities, and city-states. Further, at the end of the fifteenth century Europe was in the throes of a bloody conflict with the mighty Ottoman Empire, which was pushing its way, inexorably it seemed, toward the gates of Vienna.

Asian cultures, on the other hand, appeared to be thriving as late as the fifteenth century. China, for example, had a highly developed and vibrant culture. Its unified, hierarchic administration was run by welleducated Confucian bureaucrats who had given an unparalleled coherence and sophistication to Chinese society. China's technological prowess was also formidable. Printing by movable type had already appeared in the eleventh century. Paper money had expedited the flow of commerce and growth of markets. China's gargantuan iron industry, coupled with the invention of gunpowder, gave it immense military strength.

However, and amazingly, it was Europe that leapt ahead. Something almost magical happened to European minds, and this was followed by wave after wave of progress, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, from the Scientific Revolution to the Industrial Revolution. While Asian societies degenerated into backwardness and ossification, European societies, propelled forward by new forms of economic organization, militarytechnical dynamism, political pluralism within the continent as a whole (if not within all individual countries), and the uneven beginnings of intellectual liberty (notably in Italy, Britain, and Holland), produced what would surely have been called at the time the "European miracle"--had there been an observing, superior civilization to mark the event. Because that mix of critical ingredients did not exist in any of the Asian societies, they appeared to stand still while Europe advanced to the center of the world stage. Colonization, which began in the late fifteenth century, and the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, augmented and entrenched Europe's dominant position.

Coming from a small state like Singapore, with a population of three million, it is a source of great wonder to me that a modest country like Portugal, also with a population of only a few million, could carve out territories like Goa, Macau, and Malacca from larger and more ancient civilizations. It was an amazing feat. But what is even more amazing is that it was done in the 1500s. The Portuguese colonizers were followed by the Dutch, then the French, then the British. Throughout all this period, for almost three centuries or more, Asian societies lay prostrate and allowed themselves to be surpassed and colonized by far smaller societies.

But the most painful thing that happened to Asia was not the physical but the mental colonization. Many Asians (including, I fear, many of my ancestors from South Asia) began to believe that Asians were inferior beings to the Europeans. Only this could explain how a few thousand British could control a few hundred million people in South Asia. If I am allowed to make a controversial point here, I would add that this mental colonization has not been completely eradicated in Asia, and many Asian societies are still struggling to break free from it.

It is truly astonishing that even today, as we stand on the eve of the twenty-first century and five hundred years on from the arrival of the first Portuguese colonizers in Asia, only one--I repeat, only one--Asian society has reached, in a comprehensive sense, the level of development that prevails generally in Europe and North America today. The Japanese mind was the first to be awakened in Asia, beginning with the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s. Japan was first considered developed and more or less accepted as an equal by 1902, when it signed the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

If Asian minds can think, why is there today only one Asian society that has been able to catch up with the West? I rest my case for the negative answer to our question. Those of you who want to tick "No" to the question "Can Asians think?" can proceed to do so.

The "Yes" Answer

LET ME NOW try to draw out the arguments for answering "Yes" to the question "Can Asians think?"

The first, and the most obvious one, is the incredible economic performance of East Asian societies in the past few decades. Japan's success, while it has not been fully replicated in the rest of Asia, has set off ripples that now, current problems notwithstanding, have the potential to become tidal waves. Japan's economic success was first followed by the "four tigers" (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore). Their success convinced the other Southeast Asian countries, especially Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, that they could do the same. Lately they have been followed by China, which now has the potential to overtake the United States and become the world's largest economy by 2020 or earlier. What is amazing is the pace of economic development. It took the British 58 years (up to 1780), America 47 years (1839), and Japan 33 years (1880s) to double their economic output. On the other hand, it took Indonesia 17 years, South Korea 11 years, and China 10 years to do the same. As a whole, from 1960 to 1990 the East Asian miracle economies grew more rapidly and more consistently than any other group of economies in the world. They averaged 5.5 percent annual per capita real income growth, outperforming every economy in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and even the OECD countries, which only averaged 2.5 percent growth in that period.

You cannot get good grades in an exam by luck. It requires intelligence and hard work. Similarly, you cannot get good economic performance, especially of the scale seen in Asia, simply by luck. It reflects both intelligence and hard work. And it is vital to stress here that the pace and scale of the economic explosion seen in Asia is unprecedented in the history of man. The chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, captured this reality well in a recent Asian Wall Street Journal article (February 2, 1998):

The East Asian `miracle' was real. Its economic transformation of East Asia has been one of the most remarkable accomplishments in history. The dramatic surge in gross domestic product which it brought about is reflected in higher standards of living for hundreds of millions of Asians, including longer life expectancy, better health and education, and millions of others have rescued themselves from poverty, and now lead more hopeful lives. These achievements are real, and will be far more permanent than the present turmoil.

The confidence of East Asians has been further boosted by the numerous studies that now demonstrate their impressive academic performance, both in leading Western universities and at home. Today, many of the top students produced by American universities are of Asian origin. Educational excellence is an essential prerequisite for cultural confidence. To put it baldly, many Asians are pleased to wake up to the realization that their minds are not inferior. Most Westerners cannot appreciate the change because they could never directly feel the sense of inferiority many Asians experienced until recently.

The second reason why we might answer "Yes" to the question "Can Asians think?" is that a very vital mental switch is taking place in many Asian minds. For centuries, Asians have believed that the only way to progress was through emulation of the West. Yukichi Fukuzawa, a leading Meiji reformer, epitomized this attitude when he said in the late nineteenth century that for Japan to progress, it had to learn from the West. The other leading modernizers in Asia, from Sun Yatsen to Jawaharlal Nehru, shared this fundamental attitude. The mental switch that is taking place in Asian minds today is that they no longer believe that the only way to progress is by copying; they now believe they can work out their own solutions.

This switch in Asian minds has taken place slowly and imperceptibly. Until a few decades ago, Western societies beckoned as beacons on the hill, living models of the most successful form of human societies: economically prosperous, politically stable, socially just and harmonious, ethically clean, and, all in all, providing the best possible conditions for their citizens to grow and thrive as individuals. These societies were not perfect but they were clearly superior, in all senses of the word, to any society outside the West. Until recently it would have been folly, and indeed inconceivable, for any Asian intellectual to suggest, "This may not be the path we want to take." Today this is what many Asians are thinking, privately if not publicly.

Overall, though, there is no question that Western societies still remain more successful than their East Asian counterparts. They retain fields of excellence in areas that no other society comes close to, in their universities, think tanks, and certainly in cultural realms. No Asian orchestra comes close in performance to the leading Western orchestras, even though the musical world in the West has been enriched by many brilliant Asian musicians.

Many Asians, however, are shocked by the scale and depth of social and economic problems that have afflicted many Western societies. In the case of North America, they are troubled by the relative breakdown of the family as an institution, the plague of drug addiction and its attendant problems, including crime, the persistence of ghettos and the perception that there has been a decline in ethical standards. This is exemplified by statistics provided by the U.S. government that reflect social trends for the period 1960-90. During that period, the rate of violent crime quadrupled, single parent families almost tripled, as did the number of U.S. state and federal prisoners. Asians are also troubled by the addiction of Europeans to their social security nets, despite clear evidence that these nets now hold down their societies and have created a sense of gloom about long-term economic prospects. In previous decades, when East Asians visited North America and Western Europe they envied the high standard of living and better quality of life in those societies. Today, though, the high standards of living remain in the West but Asians no longer consider them as role models. They are beginning to believe that they can attempt something different.

A simple metaphor may explain what Western minds would see if they could peer into Asian minds. Until recently, most of those minds shared the general assumption that the developmental path of all societies culminated in the plateau on which most Western societies now rest. Hence, all societies, with minor variations, would end up creating liberal, democratic societies, giving emphasis to individual freedoms, as they moved up the socio-economic ladder. Today Asians can still see the plateau of contentment that most Western societies rest on; but they can also see, beyond the plateau, alternative peaks to which they can take their own societies. Instead of seeing the plateau as the natural end destination, there is a desire now to bypass it (for they do not wish to be afflicted by some of the social and cultural ills that afflict Western societies) and to search for alternative peaks beyond. This kind of mental horizon never existed in Asian minds until recently. It reveals their new confidence in themselves.

The third reason why we might answer "Yes" is that today is not the only period when Asian minds have begun to stir. As more and more Asians lift their lives up frm levels of survival, they have the economic freedom to think, reflect, and rediscover their cultural heritage. There is a growing consciousness that their societies, like those in the West, have a rich social, cultural, and philosophical legacy that they can resuscitate and use to evolve their own modern and advanced societies. The richness and depth of Indian and Chinese civilizations, to name just two, have been acknowledged by Western scholars. Indeed, for the past few centuries, it was Western scholarship and endeavor that preserved the fruits of Asian civilization, just as the Arabs preserved and passed on Greek and Roman civilization in the darkest days of Europe. While Asian cultures deteriorated, the museums and universities in the West preserved and even cherished the best that Asian art and culture had produced. As Asians delve deeper into their own cultural heritage, they find their minds nourished. For the first time in centuries, an Asian renaissance is underway. Visitors to Asian cities--from Tehran to Calcutta, from Bombay to Shanghai, from Singapore to Hong Kong-will find now both a new-found confidence as well as an interest in traditional language and culture. As their economies grow and as they have more disposable income, Asians spend it increasingly on reviving traditional arts. What we are witnessing today is only the bare beginnings of a major cultural rediscovery. But the pride that Asians feel about their culture is clear and palpable.

In short, Asians who would like to rush and answer "Yes" to the question posed have more than ample justification to do so. But before they arrive at a final judgment, I would advise them to pause once more and reflect on the reasons for believing that, after all, "Maybe" is the right answer.

The "Maybe" Response

DESPITE THE TRAVAILS sparked by the financial crisis in late 1997, most Asians continue to be optimistic about their future. Such optimism is healthy. Yet it may be useful for Asians to learn a small lesson in history from the experience of Europeans exactly a century ago, when Europe was full of optimism. In his 1993 book Out of Control, Zbigniew Brzezinski described how the world looked then:

The twentieth century was born in hope. It dawned in a relatively benign setting. The principal powers of the world had enjoyed, broadly speaking, a relatively prolonged spell of peace .... The dominant mood in the major capitals as of January 1, 1900 was generally one of optimism. The structure of global power seemed stable. Existing empires appeared to be increasingly enlightened as well as secure.

But despite this great hope, the twentieth century became, in Brzezinski's words,

... mankind's most bloody and hateful century, a century of hallucinating politics and of monstrous killings. Cruelty was institutionalized to an unprecedented degree, lethality was organized on a mass production basis. The contrast between the scientific potential for good and the political evil that was actually unleashed is shocking. Never before in history, was killing so globally pervasive, never before did it consume so many lives, never before was human annihilation pursued with such concentration of sustained effort on behalf of such arrogantly irrational goals.

One of the most important questions that an Asian has to ask himself today is a simple one: Can any Asian society, with the exception of Japan (which is an accepted member of the Western club), be absolutely confident that it can succeed and do as well in a comprehensive sense as contemporary advanced societies in North America and Western Europe have done? If the answer is that there is none, or even that there are only a few of whom that can be said, then the case for the "Maybe" response becomes stronger.

There are still many great challenges that Asian societies have to overcome before they can reach the comprehensive level of achievement enjoyed by Western societies. The first challenge in the development of any society is economic. Until the middle of 1997 most East Asian societies believed that they had mastered the basic rules of modern economics. They liberalized their economies, encouraged foreign investment flows, and practiced thrifty. fiscal policies. The high level of domestic savings gave them a comfortable economic buffer. After enjoying continuous economic growth rates of 7 percent or more per annum for decades, it was natural for societies like South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia to assume that they had discovered the magical elixir of economic development.

The events following the devaluation of the Thai baht on July 2, 1997 demonstrated that they hadn't. The remarkable thing about this financial crisis was that no economist anticipated its depth or scale. Economists and analysts remain divided on its fundamental causes. As the crisis is still unfolding at the time of writing, it is too early to provide definitive judgments on those causes. But a few suggestions are worth making.

On the economic front, many mistakes were made. In Thailand, for example, the decision to sustain fixed exchange rates between the baht and the dollar, despite the disparity in interest rates, allowed Thai businessmen to borrow cheap in U.S. dollars and earn high interest rates in Thai bahc This also led to overinvestments in Thailand's property and share markets. All this was clearly unsustainable. The IMF provided some discreet warnings. However, the relatively weak coalition governments then prevailing in Thailand were unable to administer the bitter medicine required to remedy the situation, because some of it had to be administered to their financial backers. Domestically, it was a combination of economic and political factors that precipitated and prolonged the financial crisis.

There was also a huge new factor that complicated the story: the force of globalization. The key lesson that all East Asian economic managers have learned in the 1997-98 crisis is that they are accountable not only to domestic actors but to the international financial markets and their key players. The East Asians should not have been surprised. It was a logical consequence of liberalization and integration with the global economy. Integration has brought both benefits (in terms of significant increases in standards of living) and costs (such as loss of autonomy in economic management). But there was a clear reluctance to acknowledge and accept the loss of autonomy. This was demonstrated by the state of denial that characterized the initial East Asian response to this crisis, a denial that clearly showed the psychological time lag in East Asian minds in facing up to new realities.

Significantly, the two East Asian economies that have (after the initial bouts of denial) swallowed most fully the bitter medicine administered by the tMF are the two societies that have progressed faster in developing middle classes that have integrated themselves into the worldview of the new interconnected global universe of modern economics. South Korea and Thailand, although they continue to face serious economic challenges, have clearly demonstrated that their elites are now well plugged in to the new financial networks. The new finance minister of Thailand, Tarrin Nimmanhaeminda, walks and talks with ease in any key financial capital. His performance is one indicator of the new globalized Asian mind that is emerging.

The 1997-98 financial crisis also demonstrated the wisdom of the Chinese in translating the English word "crisis" as a combination of two Chinese characters, "danger" and "opportunity." Clearly, the East Asian societies have experienced many dangerous moments. But if they emerge from the 199798 financial crisis with restructured and reinvigorated economic and administrative systems of management, they may yet be among the first societies in the world to develop strong immune systems to handle present and future challenges springing from globalization. It's too early to tell whether this is true. And this in turn reinforces the point that on the economic front, one should perhaps give the "Maybe" answer.

Second, on the political front most Asian societies, including East Asian societies, have a long way to go before they can reach Western levels of political stability and harmony. There is little danger of a coup d'etat or real civil war in most contemporary Western societies (with the possible exception, still, of Northern Ireland). Western societies have adopted political variations of the liberal democratic model, even though the presidential systems of the United States and France differ significantly from the Westminster models of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. These political forms are not perfect. They contain many features that inhibit social progress, from vested interest lobby groups to pork barrel politics. Indeed, it would be fair to say that political development in most Western societies has atrophied. But it has nevertheless atrophied at comfortable levels. Most of their citizens live in domestic security, fear no oppression, and are content with their political frameworks. How many Asian societies can claim to share this benign state of affairs? The answer, clearly, is very few. And if it is equally clear that they are not going to enjoy this in the very near future, then this again militates in favor of the "Maybe" answer.

Third, in the security realm, the one great advantage Western societies have over the rest of the world is that war among them has become a thing of the past. The reasons for this are complex. It includes an awareness of ethnic affinity among Western tribes who feel outnumbered by the rest of the world's population and also a sense of belonging to a common civilization. It may also reflect the exhaustion of having fought too many wars in the past. Nevertheless it is truly remarkable, when we count the number of wars--and truly big wars--that the British, French, and Germans have fought with each other (including two in this century), that there is today almost a zero chance of war between their countries. This is a remarkably civilized thing to have achieved, reflecting a considerable step forward in the history of human affairs. When will India and Pakistan, or North and South Korea, achieve this same zero prospect of war? And if the answer is not in the near future, is it reasonable to suggest that perhaps Asian minds (or the minds of Asian societies) have not reached the same level as the West?

Fourth, Asians face serious challenges in the social realm. While it is true that it took the social dislocations caused by the Industrial Revolution to eradicate the feudal traces of European cultures (social freedom followed economic freedom), it is still unclear whether similar economic revolutions in East Asia will have the same liberating social effects on Asian societies. Unfortunately, many feudal traces, especially those of clannishness and nepotism, continue to prevent Asian societies from becoming truly meritocratic, where individual citizens are able to grow and thrive on the basis of their abilities and not on the basis of their birth or connections or ethnic background.

Fifth and finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, the key question remains whether Asian minds will be able to develop the right blend of values that will both preserve some of the traditional strengths of Asian values (e.g., attachment to the family as an institution, deference to societal interests, thrift, conservatism in social mores, respect for authority) and absorb the strength of Western values (the emphasis on individual achievement, political and economic freedom, respect for the rule of law as well as for key national institutions). This will be a complex challenge.

ONE OF THE EARLY (and perhaps inevitable) reactions by some Western commentators to the 1997-98 financial crisis was to suggest that it fundamentally reflected the failure of Asian values. If nothing else, this quick reaction suggested that the "Asian values" debate of the early 1990s had touched on some sensitive nerves in the Western mind and soul. The desire to bury Asian values revealed the real pain that had been inflicted during that debate.

The true test of the viability and validity of values is not shown in theory but in practice. Those who try to draw a direct causal link between adherence to Asian values and financial disaster have a tough empirical case to make, given the varied reactions of East Asian societies to the financial crisis. South Korea and Thailand, two of the three countries that were most deeply affected by the crisis (i.e., those who had to turn to the IMF for assistance), had been given the highest marks by the West for their moves toward democratization. The three open economies least affected by the financial crisis, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, have very different political systems. In short, there was no clear correlation between political systems and financial vulnerability.

The only correlation that is clear so far is that between good governance and resilience in the financial crisis. Good governance is not associated with any single political system or ideology. It is associated with the willingness and ability of the government to develop economic, social, and administrative systems that are resilient enough to handle the challenges brought about in the new economic era into which we are moving. China provides a good living example of this. Its leaders are not looking for the perfect political system in theory. They are searching daily for pragmatic solutions to keep their society moving forward. The population supports this pragmatism, for they too feel that it is time for China to catch up. Traditionally, the Chinese have looked for good government, not minimal government. They can recognize good governance when they experience it. The fact that Japan--which is in Western eyes the most liberal and democratic East Asian society--has had great difficulties adapting to the new economic environment demonstrates that political openness is not the key variable to look at.

It is vital for Western minds to understand that the efforts by Asians to rediscover Asian values are not only or even primarily a search for political values. Instead, they represent a complex set of motives and aspirations in Asian minds: a desire to reconnect with their historical past after this connection had been ruptured both by colonial rule and the subsequent domination of the globe by a Western Weltanschauung; an effort to find the right balance in bringing up their young so that they are open to the new technologically interconnected global universe and yet rooted in and conscious of the cultures of their ancestors; an effort to define their own personal, social, and national identities in a way that enhances their sense of self-esteem in a world in which their immediate ancestors had subconsciously accepted the fact that they were lesser beings in a Western universe. In short, the reassertion of Asian values in the 1990s represents a complex process of regeneration and rediscovery that is an inevitable aspect of the rebirth of societies.

Here again, it is far too early to tell whether Asian societies can successfully both integrate themselves into the modern world and reconnect with their past. Both are mammoth challenges. Western minds have a clear advantage over Asian minds, as they are convinced that their successful leap into modernity was to a large extent a result of the compatibility of their value systems with the modern universe. Indeed, many Western minds believe (consciously or subconsciously) that without Western value systems no society can truly enter the modern universe.

Only time will tell whether Asian societies can enter that universe as Asian societies rather than Western replicas. Since it is far too early to pass judgment on whether they will succeed in this effort, it is perhaps fair to suggest that this too is another argument in favor of the "Maybe" answer to the question "Can Asians think?"

Clearly, the twenty-first century and the next millennium will prove to be very challenging for Asian societies. For most of the past five hundred years, they have fallen behind European societies in many different ways. There is a strong desire to catch up. The real answer to our question will be provided if and when they do so. Until then, Asians should constantly remind themselves why this question remains a valid one for them to ponder. Only they can answer it. No one else can.

[1] This essay is an edited and updated version of a lecture delivered at the 7th International Conference on Thinking, held in Singapore in June 1997. It is also the lead essay in a collection of essays to be published this summer by the Times Editions, Singapore (www.timesone.com.sg/te), entitled Can Asians Think?

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By Kishore Mahbubani