Americanizing Asia?

Donald K. Emmerson

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 1998

Article preview: first 500 of 3,568 words total.

Summary:  Many observers of the Asian financial crisis have been tempted to declare the victory of American-style capitalism. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 vindicated America's political model -- liberal democracy -- so the collapse of Asia's markets in 1997 proved the wisdom of America's economic model -- free-market capitalism. But it is presumptuous to think that the crisis foretells Asian acceptance of American ways. The facts are far more complex. The Asian economies best able to withstand the present crisis may be those with more political freedom, but the real key may be competent government. East Asia is changing, but it is not Americanizing.

Donald K. Emmerson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and editor of Indonesia Beyond Suharto: Polity, Economy, Society, forthcoming in 1998.

FOLLOW THE LEADER?

Whatever its duration and outcome, the Asian financial crisis will be remembered for destroying the conventional wisdom that East Asia's economies would prosper indefinitely. Still in question are the political lessons that Asians will draw from the crisis. How much, for example, will political freedom be valued as a necessary corollary to sound economic performance? Or will those who argue that sound economic management is the political key prove persuasive? And will a "Confucian" version of the discredited "Asian values" thesis find adherents?

The crisis began on July 2 of last year when the Thai government ceased wasting foreign reserves on a defense of the baht and allowed it to fluctuate versus the dollar. The resulting "managed float" immediately proved unmanageable. The baht's fall triggered a regional currency and equity cascade. As it swept from Bangkok through Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Jakarta to Seoul and Hong Kong, upbeat exponents of "Asia rising," "the East Asian model," and an imminent "Pacific century" barely had time to edit these phrases from their screens and diskettes.

A few early warnings had been sounded. The World Bank had worried about trends in Thailand before July. And some skeptics, like the MIT economist Paul Krugman, had doubted that East Asia's breakneck economic pace could be sustained. Nevertheless, most analysts were sanguine and slow to reconsider. But in hindsight it is clear that for much of Asia 1997 was an annus horribilis. The crisis appeared to have abated in some countries earlier this year, notably Thailand and South Korea, but it worsened in Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy. These days most observers expect the crisis, or its aftershocks at any rate, to endure into 1999 if not beyond.

In 1997 five East Asian stock markets -- those of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand -- lost more than three-fifths of their value in dollars. Economic, environmental, and health problems due to Indonesia's prolonged drought and forest fires compounded these shocks in maritime Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Japan's economy remained in doldrums that have lasted seven years, longer than any other lapse in that country's growth since World War II. As for China, financially hemorrhaging state enterprises continue to threaten stability across the Middle Kingdom.

The ramifications of East Asia's crisis go beyond the region. And they amount to more than the question the media keep asking: "Who else will catch the Asian flu?" In the United States, the rupturing of optimism about East Asia seems to tip the balance between the two most widely discussed positions about the dynamics of power in the post-Cold War world. The two sides of this debate can be termed divergence and convergence. Divergence holds that foreigners are challenging American dominance by asserting non-American models in politics, economics, and culture. On the other side, convergence suggests that foreigners are paying tribute to the supremacy of the United States by imitating its superior ways. Events in East Asia in 1997 appeared to weaken the case for divergence ...

End of preview: first 500 of 3,568 words total.