I have been going through the books and papers on the political economy, arts, culture, state and societies of Central, East and Southeast Asian countries for the past several months.
The reading, often purely for pleasure and insight, is also part of my interest in the shift of power from West to East, something that has been discussed over and again for most of the past two decades.
It is also preparation of sorts for my anticipated travels to places as far apart as the Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand and to Makassar in Sulawesi, an island east of Borneo.
My interest in the observatory grew in part out of my interest in astronomy and mathematics but more so in the “global finance” of the Ottoman Empire between 1299 and 1922.
At the base of my interests and anticipated travels in 2024 is to get a sense of how large-scale social and historical shifts play out or affect the lives of individuals, families and communities. A standout example is, of course, the way Jakarta is sinking and a new Indonesian capital is being built in the Bornean state of Kalimantan, 1,300km away.
There has been some mild hysteria from Western liberal intellectuals about the new capital, which made me wish I could read their objections when new capitals were built in the US (Washington, DC); Saudi Arabia (Riyad); Brazil (Brasilia) and Australia (Canberra).
One important motivating factor for my continued interest in “the rise of the East” (switching the “level of analysis” from the macro or systemic to the micro and meso) is a headline I have always remembered, one that suggested the success of the East is or was due to sweat.
I probably got it wrong, but some time in the 1990s US economist Paul Krugman seemed to suggest that creativity and innovation in capitalist research & development was a Western thing, driven I assumed by a “protestant work ethic” and the only thing Easterners were capable of — “hard work”. He referred to Asia’s superlative growth as a “miracle”.
The kicker was Krugman’s suggestion that “Asian growth has so far been mainly a matter of perspiration rather than inspiration — of working harder, not smarter”. It seems Asians don’t design, and can only assemble things designed in the West. Smartphones or sneakers are conceptualised in the West and simply assembled in China.
Krugman and a legion of true believers would probably rush in with the usual “taken out of context” defence. I should remind them that when (in 1997) Krugman fudged some kind of defence for employing children on smouldering rubbish dumps in Southeast Asia, he channelled Hendrik Verwoerd and said being a “hewer of wood and carrier of water” was better than no job at all. He also said anyone who disagreed with him did not think long and hard enough — as if all human thought necessarily ended in the wisdom of Krugman.
With Krugman channelling Verwoerd (about coloured people) I often cringe when I remember the cruel callousness of the slogan Arbeit macht frei displayed above the entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp. Imagine using that to make the argument that hard, menial work is better than no work at all. And anyway, if hard work was all it’s made out to be, African, Asian and Latin American women should all be millionaires.
The rise of the East is more a return to glory and the place it held historically in world affairs and the political economy. If measured or evaluated only through an Anglo-American prism, it becomes impossible to see the financial, monetary, military, artistic or innovative taxation and land distribution patterns of, say, the Tang Dynasty (618—907) or the Srivijaya Empires (1600—1100), and how these continue to influence countries such as China, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Insights into all of this helps one understand the historical point at which we find ourselves, and what may happen next. If I were an academic and expected to produce “original” or “ground-breaking” stuff, I would return to the questions around “endism” — the end of history and the end of ideology postulates. The world has changed significantly over the past 500 years. We now have sovereign independent states, some of which are contiguous with “nations” or religions. Can we really expect extant conditions, and the ideas that underpin them, are all there is and ever will be?
There are large groups of people, from central Africa (in places like Liberia) to central and East Asia (on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan; of Syria and Turkey, and of Myanmar and Bangladesh) who simply have no country. Will “the country,” as we know it, remain the most important place to amass people voluntarily or involuntarily?
On the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea and the Celebes Sea there are small communities that live on the water, who don’t have a “country” per se. Should everything come together as expected, this is where I hope to spend time back and forth in 2024.
• Lagardien, an external examiner at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.