[The following are my remarks at this conference, held at Yale University, March 28, 2009.]
Thank you for inviting me to participate on this panel. Here's the question I will address: is the average person in Asia living in a "global" environment more so now than at some point in the past?
Here is my brief answer: only superficially so. The physical environment in which people live has generally changed, due in part to factors originating outside of that geographic space. But, those who live in Asia, ideationally, remain insular. While there has been transformation it can't be said that outside influences have been significant. If I had to put it in a catchphrase, I'd say that, as far as globalization in Asia is concerned, it's old wine in new bottles.
I admit my initial question is vague. This is because the topic itself and the terms used are as well. The topic "globalization, its effect on Asia" is ripe for discussion, if only because it has seized the high ground of public interest, while also being nebulous. Firstly, it's my contention that there is no such thing as an "Asian." That is because there really is nothing readily definable which is also meaningful called Asia. Asia is an ancient word which has always referred to a region of indistinct boundaries and uncertain shape. Over time, the English, the Germans, the Japanese -- all of them picked up the term, and applied it to a region of ever-growing size upon the map. Thus, we now have rather unuseful term "Asia" applying to geography encompassing virtually one half the entire Eastern Hemisphere, from Lebanon to Japan, and from Siberia to the Andaman Islands, and sometimes even including Australia and New Zealand. This incorporates hodgepodge of nations, languages, societies, cultures, etc. Great diversity. To make it easy on me, I shall limit my remarks to China.
"Globalization" is another terror. I have seen many definitions, each of which may be distinguished significantly from one another, from Stiglitz to Krugman to Friedman to Palmer to Tinkers to Evers to Chance. Anyone can use it to mean just about whatever he wants. The dominant usage appears to be that global economic interconnectedness has given rise to a transformation in cultural and/or social spheres. But I think it can be sliced and diced just about any way you wish to.
The term also, at least in the United States and Western Europe has come to mean that just about any way of life or belief is as good as any other and all should be tolerated. This is typical thinking of those Westerners who have so little faith in their own tradition of civilization and believe the grass is greener on the other side of the hill, usually because they've never been there.
Narrowing the question, how has Chinese life changed as a result of products and ideas originating elsewhere?
As to physical life, let's get the easy ones out of the way: the product imports. As China becomes relatively wealthier, food consumption patterns have changed to include many Western products not traditionally consumed in the Chinese home: dairy products, meat, bread. Chinese are, as a result, physically larger and stronger than they were 100 or even 25 years ago. Relatively the same change occurred in Japan in the 1960s. Chinese costume has become thoroughly Western. Traditional Chinese garb is worn only on ceremonial occasions or where formality is required -- almost as a reminder at an important time of life that one is indeed Chinese.
But these are skin deep changes. What about the ways in which Chinese think and behave? The record, I believe, is mixed.
Mainland China, with the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 became a militarized society, an extension of Yenan life. Political rule was, at least in theory, based upon a Marxist/Leninist foundation – Western ideas – but, over time, these principles and methods of governance became synthesized with both traditional Chinese as well as newly created ideas and techniques. As a brief example of that synthesis, the traditional Chinese tactic, seen often in Imperial governance, and also employed very often in modern China – even in business -- is the top-down hierarchy of political cells set one against the other in constant struggle, in an effort to keep struggle distant from the top people, those who initiated it.
The higher ideas of traditional Chinese thought were crushed, and exist now only in fragments, remaining alive in Chinese communities worldwide. Yes, there was a Chinese diaspora. Even today, the militarized nature of modern Chinese society remains, despite development since 1978, even though it has changed somewhat, leaving a spiritual vacuum. Chinese life is now bereft of its traditional ideas -- known to academics as the syncretic tradition of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism -- and within China, not much available to replace it (or better said, allowed to replace it).
Yet, in overseas Chinese communities, wherever they may exist, that tradition has begun an extraordinary resurgence – commencing at the end of the 20th century with Buddhist charitable associations, funded in part by the finances of wealthy industrialists, and fueled by a growing dissatisfaction of the populace with the insubstantial nature of financial wealth to the soul.
Certain traditional Chinese practices remain prevalent in China: Chinese education consists primarily of the memorization of facts -- the rote inculcation of knowledge. The Western idea of higher education is alien, that is, education as a means by which one's ken may be expanded, whereby one is intended to become a civilized participant in a community of capable, self-dependent individuals. (Of course, we can argue the extent to which the American public school system has been successful in doing just that.)
Briefly, as an example, we do not see Chinese youth taught to persuade by means of expository writing, the creation of an argument and the mustering of facts in support of it. Instead, writing for most Chinese is very much stream of consciousness.
Chinese continue to be taught negatively -- as opposed to the United States, which is positively. Negative criticism is used to create shame and thus, to compel change – Chinese are delicately sensitive to shaming; whereas, the West stopped using the whip to teach long ago. When I have trained or taught Chinese -- they have found both methods -- the conceptual and the positive -- very different from what they're used to. Sometimes liberating. But many of my trainees just wanted to be told what to do, so that they could mimic the teacher. To me, this is the last thing I would wish a student to do. How can you stand on your own two feet, and learn to deal with all of the changes that occur in life, if all you learn to do is mimic your instructor? (Think also of political indoctrination and the propaganda insisting that good Chinese citizens follow a path laid down by a leader.)
Let me throw out for consideration two very brief points, of which time constraints don't permit much discussion:
• An idea that has not changed: the use and abuse of power by the big against the small – in daily life, not just politics. Try crossing the street in Shanghai as you would in Manhattan. A taxi driver once told me 我比他大 (i.e., that a pedestrian must wait for him to cross first because the taxi is bigger).
• Money – here we find a great change in that it is now respected, unlike in traditional Chinese society, in which merchants were at the bottom of the list. (But has "globalization" been the cause of this effect?)
Finally, let me suggest that the study of globalization is not new to the study of Asia. John King Fairbank, who taught Chinese history at Harvard, beginning in the 1930s and over the next 40 years, posited the theory of western impact, Chinese response. Sounds a little bit like globalization, doesn't it? of course, now we have more of a two way street. Or do we?
So, has America been similarly globalized? why don’t we go out for Chinese food -- or what to the American passes for Chinese food -- and talk about it?
