Xinhua — 'Asian values' can help overcome globalization backlash: WEF chairman

The Asian way of life to harmonize individual rights with obligations to serve the society can tackle the rise of anti-globalization movements, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the world economic forum (WEF) said on Sunday.

Those who rose against globalization movements, like the majority of voters in the United Kingdom who opted to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum, "overlook that globalization and liberalism have lifted one billion people worldwide out of poverty and led to lower prices across the entire consumer supply chain, " Schwab said in his opening key note at the 5th edition of the World Government Summit (WGS).

"Instead of opposing globalization because jobs are in danger, we should try to harmonize the national identity of citizens with social harmony, a concept which is practiced in many East Asian societies," The 78-year-old WEF founder said.

"I remember when I was invited to fly with Singapore's late Prime Minster Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore to China. During our conversation aboard, he explained to me that the East Asian way of thinking is to embrace changes by trying to put apparent new developments into a harmonious balance," Schwab said.

Based on this concept, Schwab warned "we should not try to fix the current global economic system and world order, but we need a complete new social scheme which puts the well-being and happiness of the citizens into the center, whereas at the same time individuals must understand their roles as a harmonious balance between rights and obligations within and for the society by serving it like anyone serves his own interests," Schwab said.…

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'Asian values' can help overcome globalization backlash: WEF chairman

Xinhua

Pepe Escobar — China? Have Grandmaster, will travel

When I moved to live in Asia in 1994, out of Paris, my first port of call was Singapore. That was at the height of the Asian miracle. Full immersion meant learning everything that revolved around Lee [Kuan Yew] — and from Lee himself. Ideology, and political gaps aside — for instance, he was not exactly his usual razor-sharp about Iran or Russia or Latin America – Lee arguably knew more about China than any outside observer/analyst.

After all, it was Lee who dazzled the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in person, in the late 1970s, prompting Deng to launch a modern China conceived as a sort of “a thousand Singapores”; sterling economic success under tight political control. President Xi Jinping, crucially, admires Lee as “our senior who has our respect.”

As Lee tells it, when he was asked by Chinese think tanks about “peaceful rise” as the new Chinese mantra, he responded with “peaceful renaissance, or evolution, or development. A recovery of ancient glory, an updating of a once great civilization.” Not accidentally, “peaceful development” was adopted by the previous Beijing leadership.

Now that the non-stop hysterical meme across the West is the “China threat,” or, extrapolating from the South China Sea disputes, “China aggression,” it’s quite enlightening to come back to the Grandmaster for some sobering China-related hard facts. Call it the Grandmaster’s concise China, and concise China-US, most of it compiled at Lee Kuan Yew (MIT Press, 2013). No meaningful analysis of China is possible without it.

Asia Times
China? Have Grandmaster, will travel
Pepe Escobar