Cultural Globalization and the Regions of Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia

It is true, regions around the globe form in varied contexts, for different reasons. My assignment covers two regions whose interests have become intertwined in such a way that, though their histories and their present situations are dissimilar, elements of each resonate to the other.

I am going to begin with ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, one of the oldest of the world’s present constellation of regional blocs, having been formed in the midst of the Cold War in 1967. Five nations began ASEAN. The founding members are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. ASEAN archives make clear that the founding nations did not want to be mistaken for a military grouping. So their earliest declaration called for joint endeavors, active collaboration and mutual assistance in striving for peace and stability. ASEAN’s website painstakingly makes clear that its beginnings have been very important to the way its members have perceived themselves and each other. By 1976, at its first summit meeting, ASEAN members spelled out their rules for conduct with one another: 1. mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity; 2. non-interference in each other’s affairs; 3. settling their differences by peaceful means, renouncing the threat or use of force; and 4. effectively cooperating among themselves. These political rules were to guide the member states in settling conflicts and in socio-economic development endeavors. The guidelines were still in effect when the other members joined the association. Brunei joined in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997 and Cambodia, the tenth member, in 1999.

ASEAN also created a Dialogue System by which it meets with other countries and regions to confer on numerous sorts of projects and issues. The dialogue partners include Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, the United States, China, the Republic of Korea, Russia, India and the United Nations Development Programme. Most of the nations listed above are involved as trading partners but many have been very active in resolving deadly conflicts. ASEAN lists them all on its website giving grateful credit to each in the resolving of several specific conflicts, such as the Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodian Conflict.

ASEAN documents its changes and growing pains. When NGOs at the 2005 Summit meeting confronted it by citing the trade related abuses of its member states, declaring that each held economic growth above the needs of their citizenry. ASEAN made public the confrontation on its on-going website narrative. Several member states representatives went on record as wanting to the world to understand that market abuses were not driven by anything like an “Asian value”.

Yet, for all this recognition of its faults with regard to human rights especially, ASEAN is still holding workshops on “Engaging ASEAN governments in Human Rights Education” and has yet to write a Human Rights Component to its goals. (I must note here that other Asian regions and nations have not done this either). ASEAN only recently (2005) acknowledged the failure of its Constructive Engagement policy with the Burmese Junta which violently and murderously seized power in 1988. Worse, it has yet to formally turn the matter over to the United Nations.

But if ASEAN has been slow and weak-hearted in its reforms, it has nonetheless, taken pains to state its intention to change. It must not be forgotten that it was ASEAN that invited its civil society organizations and networks, including trade, to its ASEAN Summit meeting in 2005. And it openly recognized those civil society organizations as representing Asian values and global values. Those same civil society groups assist in the human rights work shops that one can find on local regional ASEAN schedules.

In keeping with its dedication to tolerance with regard to the sovereignty of member states, ASEAN has always prided itself on its cultural diversity including its several religions and many languages. In recent years, especially, it has promoted sharing culture and art through exhibits and contests. At the 2005 ASEAN Summit meeting, the tenth issue and proposal by the civil society groups pointed up the importance of more focused tolerance. The issue: “The absence of a truly people-centered ASEAN identity is very glaring today….There is a need for a community driven, collective ASEAN consciousness…a better and deeper understanding of our common history, culture and diversity”. The proposal stressed having “journalists generate information and analysis from an ASEAN perspective…..emphasizing those shared values that are rooted in all our religions and cultural philosophies.”

It seems to me that ASEAN, by inviting the civil society groups to its meeting and then to monitor the goals they set, is incorporating some of the best of globalized culture into its practices. ASEAN’s final acknowledgment that the abuses of its member states at every level are political, and not cultural, should not to be seen as dismissing the importance of building understanding through the shared elements of their cultures and their devotion to tolerance. If ASEAN can seek the help it needs from the UN with regard to Myanmar especially it will be strengthening a “people-centered” Asian identity which thrives on plurality of expression. A people-centered Asian identity finally allows cultural identities to expand and grow in modernity. Authoritarian dictatorships and anything less than “people-centered” governments destroy cultural growth and change and ultimately, stifle healthy, creative art and cultural expression.

While ASEAN may have hampered its own growth by setting its goals during the Cold War period, Northeast Asia’s failure to achieve regionalism is characterized by an inability of its core nations to move toward the integration necessary for regional development. It is not that others have not tried to encourage Northeast regionalism. In fact, ASEAN with its broad network of dialogue partners set up ASEAN + 3 Summits in which the core countries, China, South Korea and Japan met with the ASEAN member nations in order to develop regionalism among the three nations and eventually to integrate a Northeast Asia Region with ASEAN. Indeed, the ASEAN Summit meeting I spoke of earlier was, in fact, an ASEAN +3 Summit meeting. These meetings have been in effect since 1997 but no secure initiative has been taken to establish a Northeast Asia region as an economic community, incorporating even broad humanitarian ideals. ASEAN, of course, did not have this either but, by 1997, its declarations indicated that it was trying to find a way.

Why cannot the three core nations of Northeast Asia achieve a balance of power in forming an economic community? Why can’t they focus on concerns relevant to them? Why, in fact, are the relations among the three worsening, particularly between Japan and China and Japan and South Korea? Can it be cultural? Not in any real sense. The cultures of these three nations have been interacting for centuries. Their traditional arts are more similar than different. Indeed, scholars spend many years trying to untangle who influenced who and in what year?

However the three nations share a conflicted past that has never been reconciled. Korean-Japanese conflicts began in modern times, at any rate, with the Sino-Japanese War and Japan’s colonization of Korea and ended only with Japan’s defeat in 1945. Japanese war campaigns in China from the early 30’s to 1945 killed 10 million Chinese. During this period, Japan carried out scorched-earth policies. Biological warfare, medical experiments, starvation and bombings. Today, Japan still refers to that period as simply, ‘the China Incident.’ This history is part of the present the three nations share. It is true, as the recent Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro claimed, there have been apologies. He himself apologized in 2005. But his apology and others before his are isolated utterances which have no meaning in the context of anti-Korean, anti-Chinese sentiment that flourishes in the popular arts and is embodied in places like Yasukuni, the shrine commemorating those who died for the Japanese empire. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro chose to visit that shrine in his capacity as Prime Minister of Japan.

There is a great deal of popular interest in works that make fun of Koreans or Chinese. For example, a comic book called Hating the Korean Wave, in reference to the current popularity Korean fashions and popular arts have with young Japanese, depicts Koreans as weak, uncivilized, sniveling cheats. It sold 4000,000 copies. There is also another popular comic book which depicts the Chinese as AIDS-infected prostitutes and gangsters who threaten Japan. That comic, titled Introduction to China, has sold 180,000 copies, according to the Manichi Daily News (July 2006). Now newspapers in Japan have not, I am told, published these comics but they are popular and represent a sentiment that is hardly conducive to encouraging economic cooperation.

Neither China nor South Korea would publicly protest these comics, or even the offending Shrine. It is the sanctioning encouragement given to these representations by the Prime Minister in his actions and remarks that China and South Korea do publicly and formally protest. It is a national identity, not a cultural one that the recent Prime Minister and, one fears, his younger successor, will as well, advance; a notion of a power that should not have been defeated, a militaristic glory that should not be allowed to fade. With such a political ethos, there is no place for recognizing the legitimacy or equality of other states and peoples, let alone, their sovereignty. Sharing art will not suffice when politics overrides culture. We must wait upon changes in national leadership.

Having pointed to the limitations of art and cultural exchanges, I still dare to propose artistic collaborations of all the nations involved, including Japan. The story, film, documentary would examine that past from multiple views. I do not mean propaganda, just diverse views and memories to exist alongside the comics, museums, movies and such which are part of the present. And, of course, positive cultural interaction and exchanges go on all the time quite apart from those fostered by the government, UNESCO and civic society groups should continue to initiate exchanges of art and cultural programs.

As well, various regional enterprises that already exist should continue. Let me list a few: The Northeast Asian Conference on Environmental Cooperation (NEAC), held yearly which initiates numerous projects, and the Association of North East Asia Regional Governments (NEAR) which consists of local governments in Japan, China, Mongolia, Russia, South Korea and North Korea who meet to discuss various environmental problems, and who see their contributions as “contributing to the development of the region and to world peace.” The efforts of these and similar regional organizations, like those of the NGO’s and civic society groups that confronted the ASEAN +3 meeting, will outlast and be more persuasive than the divisive agendas of particular power elites.