The Future Is Asian
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There is a Western idea that holds that populations in single-party-dominated states are docile lemmings accepting a social contract that exchanges basic handouts for political freedom. But as Duke University professor Edmund Malesky has shown in the case of Vietnam, citizens don’t support the government out of fear of the ruling party but rather out of fear of the unknown alternative. Indeed, they are pragmatically and even sincerely supportive of the government even if presented with hypothetical alternatives whose agendas appear sound but whose credibility and competence is unproved.18 Vietnam’s rapid economic progress and social opening, even if not coupled with radical political change, have made it a model most developing countries want to emulate.
All of this means that when Westerners look at the future of Asian governance, they need to jettison the comforting liberal democratic prism of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, governments strongly shaped by US postwar influence, and start looking at the new vanguard of more cautious and maturing democratic technocracies. What has enabled Thailand to progress despite dozens of coups and changes of government over the past century is its strong tradition of monarchist loyalty and centralized bureaucracy. Both order and reform in Thailand emerge from the country’s technocratic spine, not its democratic organs. Similarly, even as Malaysian power rotates among politicians who have been on the scene for decades, a sufficient array of technocratic bodies managing foreign investment, infrastructure, technology, and other key areas carries forward. None of these is a fully free democracy, but each is seeking an appropriate balance between political openness and goal-oriented technocracy.
According to the independent watchdog organization Freedom House, more than half of Asia’s governments are ranked “not free.” The countries with the highest execution rates in the world are in Asia: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Iraq. Alongside China and Russia, Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines have some of the world’s most harsh and violent prisons. Asian governments have been shamefully brutal toward minority populations: Palestinians in Israel, Kurds in Turkey, Rohingya in Myanmar, Tibetans and Uighurs in China, and Tamils in Sri Lanka, to name a few terribly victimized Asian peoples. Those countries’ regimes either explicitly seek ethnic, religious, or racial purity—or simply pursue it in the name of political stability. At the same time, steady gains have been made in overall political rights and civil liberties, with greater diversity of political parties and greater freedom of association. More and more Asian states are thus moving in the direction of becoming hybrid regimes, mixing democracy with strong executives. They cannot be easily dismissed as authoritarian when there is broad support for steady leadership.
The bottom line is that across Asia, rising incomes, technological penentration, and generational change are enabling greater social and economic freedom—but politics remains fairly controlled, because regimes like it that way and, to a large degree, people do as well. The desire for stability and social order is as natural to humans as the desire for freedom. Large, diverse, fragile postcolonial Asian countries have no desire to adopt American-style democracy if it will put at risk the stability on which societal progress and successful democratization depend. This is why one should not expect an increasingly liberal social culture to be attended by governments’ becoming any less strict. Asians realize that there is such a thing as too much freedom and that responsibility is just as important a word in healthy societies.
Asia’s Top-Down Revolutions
Almost all Asian countries today share a restless impatience to get things done. Rather than delivering wild swings in government, Asians now aim for continuity across administrations on core issues such as economic and judicial reforms, investments in infrastructure, and safety nets. As INSEAD dean Ilian Mihov has demonstrated by correlating variables of the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) with economic growth, it is the rule of law, not democracy, that most strongly drives economic performance. Asians have realized that the protection of private property, a liberal entrepreneurial culture, and responsive government are the crucial drivers of their current upward trajectory. Rising middle classes everywhere demand these institutions and practices—or threaten revolution.
These lessons are particularly appropriate for Asia, where there are numerous leaders whose rule is effectively total: Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Recep Erdoğan in Turkey, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Ilham Aliyev in Azerbaijan, Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow in Turkmenistan, and Xi Jinping in China. Since none will democratize executive power by choice, we should look instead to see whether they and others can become more progressively technocratic.
The oxymoronic notion of “top-down revolution” is a reality across Asia, and it rests both on the credibility of the vision and the depth of trust people have in their leadership. According to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer, only Asian countries have high levels of trust in government: Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, and the UAE have the highest scores.19 When governments enjoy trust, they can not only pursue long-term transformation but also act decisively in crisis, whether an economic downturn or a sudden geopolitical shock. Because such Asian leaders think in generational rather than electoral terms and lines of authority are clear, everyone knows exactly where the buck stops. Neither political nor corporate leaders can slip into anonymity and wash away their sins. Failures may be forgiven, but they are never forgotten.
At the same time, because Russians know they cannot change their government, they focus instead on tangible outputs, the content of good governance without the form of democracy. Vladimir Putin has imposed and maintained stability in Russia, helping the country weather regional turbulence (some of his own making) and low oil prices while rehabilitating some industry, building shopping malls and vocational schools, and restoring a sense of pride. Starting in 2015, he appointed several competent technocrats to run state-owned companies and manage far-flung regions.20 Despite engineering a comfortable victory for himself in Russia’s 2018 presidential election, one should not be surprised if he spends his current term expanding this bench of professional administrators so that he can retire (or semiretire) in 2024.
At the same time, appointing a few technocrats is not the same as creating a technocratic system. Because we hear more and more countries touting their technocratic credentials, we should be careful not to take it at face value—lest the term come to be as unconvincing as democracy is. Always beware the oligarch in disguise. In Russia and Turkey, strongmen declare themselves to be technocrats while running elaborate patronage-based regimes (a polite way of saying mafia states). They may call in economists with Western degrees to help shore up their currencies and stave off balance-of-payments crises, but they are not meritocratic or utilitarian nation builders. Real technocrats are not Gucci-wearing thugs, nor are they Islamist wolves in sheep’s clothing. They aren’t in a hurry to get rich quick or hoard executive powers. The essence of technocracy is improving governance, not preserving one’s own rule.
Yet as the case of Russia demonstrates, the leaders of many countries will entertain a shift from crony power to technocratic decision making only once their own power is firmly entrenched. These are Asia’s transition technocracies, countries in which leadership has been seized or inherited and democracy is weak or pliant—but a new crop of young and often foreign-educated experts is relieving the old guard of its duties. They defer to the ruler who appointed them, but their loyalty lies with the state. In countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, I regularly encounter this new guard of technocrats. None of these countries is likely to have a competitive election in the next decade or more, but in the meantime, much of their policy is moving in the right direction.
Even the Arab Gulf region’s rigid monarchies are finding ways to modernize their systems and societies. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has pursued a radical agenda of economic transformation, edu
cation investment, affordable housing, reduced corruption, and curbs on the influence of the country’s Wahhabi clerics—all at the same time. As his liquidation of any critics demonstrates, however, political reform is not yet on the agenda. Though the UAE is also a monarchy, it more resembles Singapore in its attempt to use its sovereign wealth to spur economic diversification and build a technocratic caste capable of overseeing key policy areas and monitoring key performance indicators. It now ranks seventh in the world in competitiveness. Whereas governments such as that of the UAE used to hire foreigners to operate many of their agencies, now there are enough talented and eager young Emiratis competing with one another for top government jobs that that is unnecessary. The annual ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey, conducted across twenty countries, revealed in 2018 that the UAE ranks as the most desirable place in which to live, ahead of any Western country.
Across Asia, youths are a large part of the restless wave either supporting transformative governments such as Saudi Arabia’s or opposing defunct ones such as Iran’s. Indeed, Iran’s youths don’t go to the mosque to bide time; they go out on the streets to protest against corruption and an out-of-touch, geriatric theocracy. The same is true in Georgia and Armenia, where each new government is given at most a year to prove it will embrace good governance before citizens rise up and foment a much-deserved political crisis. Nationalism cannot substitute for rule of law or efficient public service delivery. Asia’s wayward regimes such as Turkey and Iran are living on borrowed time.
Then there are the countries that have hit rock bottom. In Iraq, the Western focus on democracy rather than state building led to the perpetuation of factionalized sectarianism, with Shi’a replacing Sunni atop the hierarchy. For Asia’s most war-torn and fragile states, such as Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan, SWAT teams of Indian bureaucrats training civil servants would be much more useful than democracy activists. With today’s unparalleled accumulation of historical knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in all policy areas, coupled with the ability to assess and adapt those policies in real-time, even Asia’s most challenging corners can be turned around with the technocratic toolkit.
Asia’s “Civic” Societies
Across most of Asia, civil society is neither as independent nor as politically vocal as in the West. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea are important exceptions. In Hong Kong, civil society groups took center stage in political upheavals such as the 2014 “Umbrella Revolution” and continue to agitate against Beijing’s political encroachment. In South Korea, social groups flooded the streets to demand the ouster of President Park Geun-hye in 2017. In Singapore, NGOs are generally volunteer groups dedicated to civic causes but not permitted to undertake political activities. The Chinese government imposes strict controls on lawyers, activists, and all manner of “social organizations.” In 2017, it passed a law requiring all foreign NGOs to register with the government and allow their activities to be closely monitored and regulated. In West Asia, Iranian civil society takes great risks to mobilize for political and social causes, while in its Arab neighbors, such activity is all but impossible and is becoming increasingly so in Turkey. By contrast, in Uzbekistan, where the police state once mercilessly tortured political activists, a regime change has meant that Human Rights Watch has been allowed back in and a new television station publicly challenges the government.21 India has long been considered the “NGO capital of the world” given an estimated 2.5 million civil society organizations active across the social, health, religious, and political domains, not least the Hindu-traditionalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) movement, which provides the ideological underpinnings of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and has sought to impose a narrow ethnoreligious narrative nationwide from textbooks to media.
Traditional television and print media are still censored to varying degrees across Asia. Press freedom is severely curtailed in China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Countries such as Iraq, Syria, Russia, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines account for the highest numbers of journalists murdered in recent years. In some of these countries (such as India), it is a highly free and vocal press that is being punished by political agents. In West Asia, even the most politically unfree countries now have more variegated and opinionated television discourse. The Qatar-based Al Jazeera International altered the media landscape in the Arab world with its critical coverage of the region’s regimes (except, of course, its own) and early support for the Arab uprisings in 2011, and it has inspired imitators such as Al Arabiya.
Especially among youth, I find that more and more people across Asia openly speak their minds on all subjects except for the narrow range of issues on which a roll of the eyes or suggestive glance—or customized emoji—suffices. The rise of social media has provided a major release valve for almost all Asian societies, with websites and commentators often located beyond the reach of insecure governments. Their governments have seized on the digital domain in ways that create greater space for personal and entrepreneurial freedom but also make it a new zone of political control by actively censoring Internet content. China is representative of both. The rise of the blogging site Sina Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat have burst open the digital public sphere and given Chinese people a voice on social policies and corruption. The government listens, takes constructive comments on board, and cracks down on criticism—all at the same time.
Conservative Asian cultures have been slow to liberalize in terms of women’s rights, but generational and technological changes are leading to a sea change in social norms. Though India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all had female heads of state (such as India’s Indira Gandhi and Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto) and many women in parliament, backward religious customs still enable widespread abuse, subjugation, and rape. With India’s male preference causing a horrendous gender imbalance—35 million surplus males facing social alienation and a brideless future—the situation may get worse despite government decrees and activist outpouring. The poorest Arab and Central Asian states such as Yemen and Afghanistan report the most appalling rates of sexual harassment and discrimination in schools and public life. In Arab states such as Jordan, cultural inhibitions continue to prohibit educated females to work, leading to a large number of unemployed female university graduates. Even in the most advanced Asian nations, such as Japan and South Korea, women still lag behind in terms of pay. In China, women are empowered economically and play major roles in the private sector; they make up 40 percent of Alibaba’s management. Politically, however, a renewed push to brand women as child bearers—part of the effort to boost the population after the termination of the one-child policy—reflects the minimal role women still play in politics. One economist caused a stir by suggesting that several men share one wife.
But there are some indicators of progress. From Jordan to Pakistan, honor killings have been criminalized. By taking to Twitter and YouTube, Saudi women created a publicity storm that led to an edict allowing women the right to drive (though some of the movement’s leaders were subsequently arrested). Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has further allowed women to attend sporting events and go to movie theaters. In the UAE and Qatar, women have been socially prominent for two decades, especially in education, where the majority of teachers are female. The UAE’s cabinet has more women than the United States’, about half of them Western-educated. Already about one-third of Arab start-ups are run by women, and as oil wealth dwindles, educated women will be crucial to raising household incomes, further modernizing gender norms. In Iran, where women are publicly casting off their head scarves, universities are full of women, including in traditionally male-dominated areas such as computer science.
The better educated and wealthier Asians become, the more demanding they will be that their voices be taken into account—irrespective of whether their governments become more or less formally democratic. The current spate of crackdowns on civil society in numerous Asian countries is a reflexive response to a more co
nfident media and a new educated class of entrepreneurs, youths, and women who despise corruption and elite impunity. The tide of history remains with these people: governments know that suppression is not the way to make their countries worth living in.
Can Asia’s tycoons and upwardly mobile purchase the solidarity that colonialism, social inequality, and poor governance has taken from their societies? Charity is enshrined in the teachings of the Buddha and in the Koran but is less systematized and publicized than in the West. According to the World Giving Index, since 2014 the country with the most consistently high rate (90 percent) of charitable giving is also one of the poorest, Myanmar, due to its devout Buddhist beliefs. Similarly, owing to the principle of zakat, an alms tax that constitutes mandatory giving and is one of the five pillars of Islam, nearly 90 percent of Arab Gulf citizens made charitable donations in 2016.