Asia is what political scientists, of the constructive persuasion, call a "concoction".
Cemil Aydin, one of the finest historians on Japan and the Middle East, now based in University of North Carolina, once affirmed in an Oxford dictionary on political thought, that "Asia," was the classical Greeks' description of everything east of Persia some 2,500 years ago. Asia, for the lack of better word, is an amorphous idea, lacking in any concrete geographical delimitation.
In many ways, nor does the latter matter much. The world, after all, is spherical. East of Japan is Hawaii, then the mainland United States, which we call the West. At the height of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the demonstrators somewhat captured the irony and intellectual turpitude, indeed emptiness of the concept of East and West.
Holding pictures of the then Ayatollah Khomeini, tens of thousands in the streets chanted: "neither East nor West, Islam is the best." As Iranians look back, and the rest of the Muslim world looks back together with them, invariably, through the optic of this historical revolution – one that raised the spectre of Islamic revivalism through out the world, extending from Marakesh in Morocco to Mindanao in the Philippines – all are inclined to wonder if the future is better mapped on the basis of learning from all?
The West, for what it is worth is now driven by the systemic revolutions of artificial intelligence, automation, algorithm and data analytics. The likes of China, Japan, and South Korea, regardless of their ageing demographics, appear to be driven by the same, albeit in the form of e-payment, e-commerce and an all enveloping digitisation.
China, for example, has become one of the most well-surveilled states in the world, though most of the cameras on facial and bio-recognition appear to train themselves on the Hui Muslims and Uyghurs in Xinjiang. South Korea appears to race ahead in terms of e-sports and gaming. While Japan is readying itself to host the Tokyo Olympics 2020 based on sheer application of robotics and humanoids that can speak and respond in various languages other than Japanese.
What is clear is this: it is not enough to capture Malaysia through the jingle of “Malaysia, Truly Asia”. This is precisely because Asia's very DNA is driven by a combination of digitisation, deregulation, democratisation that may or may not blossom. Cambodia, for example, has yet to yield to the rule of a single man, Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Indonesia may have significantly decentralised its powers from the centre since the fall of Suharto in 1998, but Jakarta remains tenacious to want to keep the republic together, which is why any talks of federalisation to this day is chafed at, even though more powers have slipped into the hands of the provinces.
The Philippines, once the beacon of People's Revolution that toppled Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in 1986, appears to be back at square one due to the iron-fisted rule of President Roberto Duterte.
Singapore remains a one-party state enigma that is both modern and post modern, occasionally acting like a nation state that can host the naval facilities of the United States and at times seemingly intimidated by the growing power of China as well, which is why Singapore has always taken a wisely neutral stance on South China Sea, invariable, through the prose of freedom of navigation.
Thailand, too, has not seen any serious attempt to open up its political space to election, while Myanmar and Vietnam, too, have to contend with their own domestic problems.
In any which way one looks, whether East or West, it seems all Asian countries, including those in the Middle East and Central Asia that are participating in the Asia Games to be hosted by Indonesia, are going for recipes that work according to their local requirements and blends.
Sometimes the approach is totally elitist, when the top refuses to give way to the people rising from below, while at other times the approach produces one or two upsets – as when Malaysia and Pakistan suddenly produced a democratic breakthroughs.
The 'wa' factor
Amidst the concordant discord and clamour to Look East or West, it seems that Dr Mahathir Mohammad, the seventh prime minister of Malaysia, has doubled down on the former. By Looking East, Mahathir is convinced that Malaysia can ultimately find the Japanese concept of "wa", or harmony – where the science and technology of the West can co-exist in a fertile manner with the values and traditions of the East.
How this convergence is achieved is now in the hands of various ministers and policy makers. Some insist that to Look East requires the transformation of Malaysia into a Malaysia Incorporated, not unlike the Japan Inc at one stage.
Others feel that the Look East policy is bound to fail since Japan is a country too unique to be emulated by anyone, even spawning the concept of "Nihonjinron", the theory of the uniqueness of Japan. Yet there are a few who argue that what Japan ultimately achieved was but a syncretic form of hybridisation.
The Japanese parliament is Whitehall in form. The Japanese education system is rooted in Prussian ethos of discipline. The Japanese civil service is modelled on French, shaped and inspired by the elites trained at the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) and Sciences Po, which in turn beget a bevy of elites from University of Tokyo, Keio University and Waseda University.
Whether Malaysia is able to Look East or not during Mahathir’s second tenure, Japan and Asia are both too deeply complex to be simplified in one or two phrases. It requires many trips and sojourns in different parts of the world to get the formula right. The key is perhaps a concept focused on the post-colonial definition of what Japan and China once called "rich country and strong army."
What Malaysia truly wants – indeed what Asia truly wants to be – appears to be this nationalist dream to be both rich and powerful. But as the rise of China has shown, when one is strong, it invites envy and efforts of counter-constrainment.
Malaysia wants to be rich and strong but it must do so in a manner concurrent to the emergence and growth of Asean as well. To be vibrant and robust, all of Malaysia and Asean must know how to agree to disagree, and disagree politely and agreeably.
As Lao Tzu, the sage, once said: "The Way that can be named is not the Way". Put differently, human beings, as the Quran affirmed, was destined to be different. It is how one learned from one another, without fail, that distinguishes one from the other in an endless race to the top of the value chain of virtues.
Japan, it so happens, has this Zen concept of emptiness and perfection. In Looking East, perhaps Malaysia also has to look deep within again and again to know where our shortcomings are, both at the federal, state, and personal levels.
PHAR KIM BENG is a Harvard/Cambridge Commonwealth Fellow, a former Monbusho scholar at the University of Tokyo and visiting scholar at Waseda University. -Mkini
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