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

Xinhua — Xi's world vision: a community of common destiny, a shared home for humanity

The chief value for Western liberalism is personal freedom. The chief value for traditional Chinese culture is harmony. 

President Xi is positioning China to reassert its traditional role as the Middle Kingdom, which can also be rendered as Central Realm or even Center of the World based on harmony among all peoples.

Economically, this pits the market state, in which distribution is based on competition among wants, against the welfare state, in which distribution is based on a constellation of needs.

This is often or usually characterized in the West as the distinction between a free market economy and a command economy, but it is actually different approaches to a managed economy, since government necessarily plays key roles in each. There are many such approaches possible and some of them have already been tried.

The looks like it may be the beginning of a new stage in the historical dialectic as China and other non-Western countries become developed countries capable of competing with the West not only economically and militarily but also in the conflict of ideas that drives the historical dialectic from the Hegelian point of view.

In in the view, different ideas clash in the conflict of ideas and some have their moment as dominant before being replaced by a fresh idea in the succeeding moment. However, the idea that is replaced is also subsumed and continues to influence historically. 

A previously subsumed idea may also reemerge subsequently in a fresh form to do battle in the conflict of ideas that drives history. Chinese traditionalism is reemerging in a fresh form to confront the dominant liberalism of West on the world stage. 

They will both be subsumed in another moment in the series of moments that constitutes the temporal unfolding of the historical dialectic. What that might look like then we can only guess at now.

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Xi's world vision: a community of common destiny, a shared home for humanity

Xinhua

East Asian Forum — China Regards Harmony as a Strategic Concept

One of the discipline’s greatest theorists, Kenneth Waltz, argues that the international system has a consistent set of features that transcends time. Most important is the anarchical structure (the lack of a central authority to govern the relations between states). For Waltz, the anarchy of the international system drives competition between states and is the permissive cause of conflict.

Therefore, it may appear that China is shaping up for a new era of global imperial competition. Yet appearances can be deceiving.

Shiping Tang, professor of international relations at Fudan University, argues that the international system is evolving to the point where war is no longer something states inevitably choose to engage in under anarchy. Tang argues that as a part of human society, the international system has been evolutionary from the beginning. The evolutionary changes are endogenous — that is, they are caused from within the system. The co-evolution of agent, agents’ behaviour, and system is key for understanding this transformation of the international system.

The evolution of the international system from an offensive to a defensive system was complete after World War II. The offensive system was the one the European imperialists inhabited. It was aggressive and war-prone. The gradual reduction in number of states and increase in the average size of states lead to the spreading of certain social ideas, such as that conquest was becoming more and more difficult. This learning process changed state ideas and practice, in time bringing about a defensive system.

The current defensive international system is evolving into a more institutionally rule-based system. Some offensive states still exist. Tang says proof that we live in a defensive system can be found in the decline of successful conquest and the existence of small states that would not have survived in the war-prone world inhabited by the imperial powers. States have learned that successful conquest is unlikely, that attempts will be punished, probably severely. Xi’s foreign policy can only be properly understood in light of this evolution of international politics.…

Economy Watch
China Regards Harmony as a Strategic Concept
East Asian Forum