ASIAN AFFAIRS INTERVIEW WITH TOMMY KOH First Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Foundation (1) THE ASIA-EUROPE DIALOGUE Serge Berthier.- The early navigators of Europe discovered Asia a long time ago. In 1557, the Portuguese settled in Macao. The Spanish took Manila before the turn of the 16th century. The Dutch settled in Java in 1619, renaming it Batavia. Then, came the British, the French. One would think that the European society is rather well acquainted with Asia. Yet, the Asia-Europe Foundation is there to further the relationship between the civil societies of the two regions. Had the Europeans really disappeared from the map of Asia to the point that there was a need to build a new Euro-Asian relationship? Tommy Koh. - Since the second world war, Southeast Asia has been witness to the retreat of the Europeans and their replacement by the Americans. Now the tide is slowly turning again. There is mutual rediscovery of Asia by Europe and of the new Europe by Asia. And this rediscovery is due to several factors: the most important being, I guess, economic. This retreat has left the two regions with a paucity of networks and exchanges which is why we need to rebuild our relations more or less from scratch. S.B.- What do you mean by paucity of exchanges? T.K.- Unfortunately, when the Europeans withdrawn from this part of the world, they really turned their back on the region. I mean France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom. They certainly had their reasons, but in the meantime the American were not only underpinning the security of the region, they were investing in our economies. They were transferring technologies to our companies, they were offering many educational opportunities. As a result, there is now a rich network of institutional linkages and personal ties between North America and East Asia. and a very weak network between Europe and East Asia. S.B.- But quite a lot of scholars, academics and politicians of ASEAN have been trained in Cambridge or Oxford. T.K.- They are the generation before. Margaret Thatcher made one strategic error, which is that she raised the tuition fees of Foreign students in a prohibitive way which resulted in a redirection of Asian students away from the United Kingdom to America. I am a good witness of this short-sighted policy. My generation was educated both in England and in the United States. I was a Fullbright scholar in America. But the next generation is solely American educated. And although I went to Cambridge, I have stronger ties with the United States. S.B.- Why, if I may ask? T.K.- The Americans, unlike the Europeans, are much more welcoming of foreigners. The American culture is a more open, welcoming culture. If I compare my experience in Cambridge in England to my experience in Harvard, I would say that I was very welcome in the US. Even before going, Harvard appointed a family for me and a student whose job was to look after me. I was never left alone at Thanksgiving or Christmas time. In Cambridge, I was just completely on my own. I didn't get to know any English families. My classmates were civil to me but I have not kept in touch with a single classmates of my Cambridge days unlike my Harvard days. Asian students going to America share my feeling. Then we should not discount the fact that students have opportunities in United States, when they finish their studies, to do research and to work, whereas elsewhere, it is much harder if not impossible. So there is a difference in culture and opportunities. In the end, you can say that United States educated a whole generation of young Asians. So the Americans have invested a great deal in this region in the past 50 years at the expense of Europe, in a way. S.B.- Nevertheless, the European Union is ASEAN's oldest dialogue partner (2). So, if on the economic front, the European were not as present as the American, they had not completely turned their back on East Asia. T.K.- European companies had not, but governments tend to lag behind business trends. European governments were slow to take notice of what was happening in East Asia in the eighties. S.B.- You mean the rise of the economies… T.K.- Yes. In my view, the rise of East Asia in the world economy is a historic phenomena. From a region which 30 years ago accounted for 9/10% of the world gross domestic product (GDP), in 1995 East Asia counted for 25% and Western Europe and Western America accounted for 29% each. Of course, we now are heading for a slow-down but, in my view, it is a temporary phenomena which should not affect the long-term trend we have been witnessing for the past twenty years. S.B.- Europe is now heavily involved in the process. It appears that the main lenders to the economies, Japan excluded, are the German and French banks (3). So it is hard to admit that we have a paucity of relations. T.K.- At the economic level, European companies are all here. Furthermore there is a mutual recognition by European leaders and Asian leaders that we have much to offer to each other. Europe needs our markets, we need European expertise and technologies. So there are many synergies for both of us to be in joint-ventures and alliances to take on other competitors. And on the cultural side, it is obvious that we both have much to offer to each other because we are two ancient and rich civilizations. But it is not enough. It does not provide for a good understanding if the civil society is left out. That is where we need to work if we want to have good co-operation. S.B.- Is it so important to have co-operation as long as you have strong economic relations? T.K.- You have to look at it at the strategic level. There is an understanding that we are living increasingly in a tripolar world, with three equally powerful engines, North America, Western Europe and East Asia. S.B.- Where does that leave South America or China, just to mention economies that are neither there nor here? T.K.- We are looking at the long-term. I believe that the ambitions of the Americans is to integrate the whole of the Southern hemisphere into a Western hemisphere economic regional entity. Then you have Western Europe which is expanding on its Eastern side. Then you have East Asia which, in its organic way, is pulling together. The meeting held in Kuala-Lumpur mid-December 1997 with the leaders of ASEAN sitting for the first time together with China, Japan and Korea is a step in one direction. Of course, it is not formalized, it is not going to be institutionalized any time soon if ever, but the sense of unity is there. There is a sense of affinity. We meet together, we are comfortable with each other. We have a certain communality, a certain common mind-set. S.B.- You share values, the so-called Asian values. Isn't there where the weak point lies with Europe? T.K.- Yes. One of my jobs at the foundation is to try to explain trends, developments in one region to the other and to write things about mutual understanding. It is a long-term thing. I hope it works but I would be deluding myself if I was saying it is going to be easy. S.B.- Why? T.K.- Because of the weakness of the interaction between the civil societies, the media and the people of the two regions. S.B.- What you mean is that by building up relations within the civil society, there is a chance that each society will have less prejudices against the other? T.K.- Exactly. A lot of prejudices are just born out of ignorance. It is also arrogance. We had a meeting in Luxembourg in October 1997 where we brought forty three editors from Europe and Asia for a one day meeting. It was a fascinating experience. They were quite frank with each other but non-confrontational. The Europeans complained that Asia is not transparent, is not open. They were saying that without connections, you can't have access to people, you have little information. The complaints on the Asian side was, "you are arrogant, you come not to listen to other people's view, but to force your views. You are pompous. You don't know anybody but you want to see that person, this one, and so on. Then, you are unsympathetic when you write reports. You are always looking for negatives, not positives". So it is very unbalanced. S.B.- That is a common complaint. T.K.- The surprising thing is that the European editors acknowledged it. They just said: "It's not new. This is the way we write about ourselves. We beat up our leaders, why should not we beat up yours the same way?" S.B.- Why, indeed? T.K.- That is where our cultures differ. Europeans have a very cynical view of the world. I don't know what happened, why European people are now so cynical and negative about everything. In America, I know what happened. I was there. After Watergate, there was a real historical change of perspective, of attitude towards government and society. In Europe I don't know what went wrong. I found generally speaking that the media is cynical and does not go into depth. I give you two examples of the differences between our two societies. The first one is about a deputy editor from Asahi Shimbun, a very good man. During that meeting, he explained that in order to encourage the leaders and the people of Japan to understand more about Europe, he runs a series based on the ordinary life of European people. It is not great men, movies stars or whatever. Just ordinary families, workers. He said that the Japanese readers are fascinated. The Europeans laughed at him and said if you wanted to do the same series in Europe, nobody would read it. S.B.- It is true that publishers and editors shy away from such topics, but it is may be just a kind of self-censorship. I am not sure that the ordinary reader wouldn't be fascinated by the ordinary life of a Japanese or a Chinese. T.K.- The second example is about a Scandinavian journalist who was there in Luxembourg. He was an angry man. At dinner, I asked him: "Why do you have so much anger?" He said, "Well I have a guilty conscience. During the cold war, we, journalists made too many compromises with the Soviet Union, with the Soviet journalists. I often ask myself, had we been less co-operative, more confrontational, would we have succeeded in bringing the Soviet Union down earlier?" And now that the Soviet Union has disappeared, with this mind-set China has replaced the Soviet Union as he sees it. So that is a real problem. I told him: "Have you been to China? China is not exactly the evil empire, you know. The Communist party is in power but the life is so different to what it was ten years ago. Of course, there are short-comings but there are also many pluses. And maybe your judgment will be a little more balanced if you go and see. You are judging from Scandinavia based upon your experience of confrontation with the Soviet Union with all the hang-ups associated with that which have little relevance with what China is today". He said no. I said, "Come on, that is not reasonable". He did not budge. So, this is the background we are working with. In a way, I was disappointed. S.B.- Do you think that the media are in Europe as powerful as they are in the United States? T.K.- The way I see it is that you have strong lobbies who feel, for example, that Aung San Suu Kyi is the Joan of Arc of Burma. The media has the power to create icons and she has become an icon. Then the few countries that feel very strongly about it were able to get an European consensus on the subject. What it means once you get such consensus, is that you are locked-in. So when recently, the Europeans said there will be no meeting in Bangkok with ASEAN if Myanmar is attending, we were left with no option but to say, "Okay, then no meeting". S.B.- It is not very productive. T.K.- It is actually counter-productive. It was much more efficient for Khofi Annan to come to Kuala-Lumpur in December to talk with all parties and meet with the leader of Myanmar, to have a better understanding of the country. It was a quiet way, non-confrontational, no media involved, it was the best way because at the end he managed to get things moving (4). That is the important thing. It is completely different from the way the Europeans wanted to do it. S.B.- It seems to me that Europe has the same line as the one they had towards China in 1989 towards Myanmar ? T.K.- Absolutely, and it did not achieve anything, did it? S.B.- Do you think the problem is just a problem of understanding between Europe and Asia about the values of democracy or is there more than that behind the political rhetoric? T.K.- Democracy is a wonderful thing but we have reached the point where lobbies are what count in Parliament. That is bad for democracy. You have very vocal human-rights advocates and so on. Look at American democracy. Sometimes the way it works is so undemocratic. In a speech I made at Harvard for its 350 year anniversary sometime ago, I gave one example: just one little tuna lobby based in Southern California was able to prevent the United States from honoring its obligations under international law which is that little countries in the South Pacific have a right to their fishing zones. And the tuna lobby was able to prevent the United States from doing that. So that American trawlers can go down the South Pacific and poach the tuna because they have the power to do it. Those little countries are powerless. The tuna lobby does not go along the coast of Peru or Chile because they will see their boats confiscated. Some people in the crowd got very angry when I made that remark. They even wrote to Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, complaining about what I said. But it was the truth. Or look at the gun lobby in America. The kind of influence it has is shameful. What we have now, not only in the United States, is that elected governments have to give-in to single interested lobbies. That is not a good development for democracy. S.B.- Obviously, Western nations disagree on the value of democracy with ASEAN. Do you see any chance for a better understanding on both parts? T.K.- A dialogue on negatives and positives of democracy would be good. My personal opinion is that we should go beyond forms. The trouble with the West is that it is more interested in forms than substance. Let's talk about substance. What do we want? We want to live under good government. And what is a good government? In a speech on the subject, I gave ten indicators amongst which were a government based on the rule of law, a government who treats its people with humanity, a transparent decision process, but also what Asians treasure, that is public order, social harmony. Of course, everybody want an economic system that will take care of basic human needs but at the same time it needs to be socially equitable. But the key issue is that the government should protect the family. S.B.- Family values are not exactly at the top of the agenda of any Western government… T.K.- Actually it would be good to have a conference between Asia and Europe about the family. I was very shocked recently when a friend, in France, told me "what is the big deal of having children out-of-wedlock?" "No big deal", he said. "It is normal." But then what kind of society do we have with such an assumption? S.B.- A very loose one, I suppose? T.K.- A poor one, I think. A breeding ground for cults which is a very dangerous social phenomena. Winter 1998 Notes: 1.- In March 1996, the sixteen leaders of the European Union met the ten leaders of East Asia in Bangkok. At this historic Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit, the leaders from the two continents decided to build a new Euro-Asian House. The house would have four pillars. The first three pillars represent the links between the political leaders, the officials, and the business entities respectively. The fourth pillar consists of the engagement between the civil societies of the two regions. The Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) was established by members of ASEM on 15 February 1997 with the aim of building the fourth pillar. ASEF aims to accomplish its mission by: a) generating new ideas for building networks involving scholars, artists, journalists and other leaders of civil society from the ASEM countries; b) collaborating with relevant institutions and individuals; c) acting as a clearing house, catalyst and facilitator; and d) organizing flagship projects of its own. 2.-The relation between ASEAN and Europe started as early as 1973 as the European Economic Community was the first grouping with which ASEAN established links. A Joint Study Group was established in 1975 to evaluate how this relationship could be developed. In 1977, the relations were formalized when the European Community (EC) became an ASEAN dialogue partner and was invited to attend the first ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference. The first ASEAN-EC Ministerial meeting was held in Brussels on 20-21 November 1978. It was followed by a second meeting, this time in Kuala-Lumpur, during which was signed a Co-operation Agreement (7 March 1980) with the members of ASEAN, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The agreement is a non-preferential frame-work agreement: it sets out objectives for commercial, economic and development co-operation activities such as strengthening regional organizations, developing EEC-ASEAN trade and economic relations, contributing to international trade and facilitating the development of the human and material resources of the two parties on the basis of freedom, equality and justice. 3.-By mid-year 1997, Europe had an exposure of about US$94.1 billion whereas United States had an exposure as a lender for only US$32.3 billion. At year-end 1993, the exposure was US$60.5 billion for the Europeans and US$25.7 billion for the Americans. 4.- As a result of the consultation, the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Alvaro de Soto has been allowed to visit Myanmar in January 1998.
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