East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (review)

About a decade and a half ago, John King Fairbank claimed that human rights was America's new religious mission, and that historically for "Americans who espouse human rights as a secular religion, China has always presented a major problem."¹ By extension we can say that human rights also presents a problem for other countries with "Asian values."²

In East Meets West, Daniel Bell offers a corrective to the "blind faith in the universal potential of liberal democracy [that] takes the form of a U.S. government policy to promote human rights and democracy abroad, regardless of local needs, habits and traditions" (p. 5, emphasis added). In this book he gives several East Asian views on human rights and democracy, and, assuming that "the current political system in China is not stable for the long term" (p. 18), the author proceeds to explore what a "democracy with Chinese characteristics" might look like.

Daniel Bell is a Westerner who is sensitive to East Asian ways. Married to a Chinese from Hong Kong, he taught for three years at the National University of Singapore, and presently is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong. The central focus of his book is human rights and democracy, but it is also an insightful account of intercultural interaction and understanding, presented through the medium of three fictitious dialogues.

These dialogues are between Sam Demo, an American who is the East Asia program officer for an organization that promotes long-term human rights and democracy and, respectively, (1) Joseph Lo, a Hong Kong businessman and himself a human-rights advocate, (2) Lee Kuan Yew, elder statesman of Singapore, who waxes eloquently about the no-nonsense authoritarian government and its apparent successes in his small city-state, where any sign of a decadent West, from drugs to chewing gum, is strictly forbidden, and (3) Professor Wang of Beijing University, a political philosopher who is on his way, in the year 2007, to a national meeting of the People's Congress to formulate a new constitution that will set China in a new direction toward democracy.

Through these imaginary conversations, Bell gives the reader vivid and unforgettable views on human rights and democracy as embodied in people with Asian values. Although the book reads like a novel, the author documents every view expressed with extensive footnotes, comments, and further references as supportive empirical evidence. This genre of writing on a complex and controversial subject is both refreshing and compelling.

Through the mouth of Joseph Lo, in dialogue and debate with Sam Demo, who insists on the need for democratic participation by the people and by duly elected opposition parties in order to check and challenge incumbent rulers, Bell makes the following critical observation:

I find that Western liberals have the hardest time suppressing the instinct to judge, or perhaps "prejudge," political decisions in foreign societies. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps it's a certain arrogant belief that the social experiences and political ideals of Western societies represent the "end of history," with a concomitant reluctance to study—and learn from—the ways of non-Western societies. It could be that a misplaced idealism prevents Western liberals from recognizing the need to deal with hard political realities.

(pp. 44-45 )

From his own experience of Singapore, a state with the second highest standard of living in Asia and the seventh lowest incidence of corruption in the world, Bell provides a much needed balance to any quick and facile condemnation of ways that differ from Western-style democracy.

With cogency he portrays Lee Kuan Yew as an erudite and astute leader (the modern-day educated noble person of Confucianism and the philosopher-king of Plato) who knows what is best for the people and seeks it through strong government, thus exemplifying the Asian tradition of...