Asian Values vs. European Values

The aim of this research paper is to compare Asian & European values. It is very useful to find cultural common denominators called ‘Asian values' among three countries: Korea, Japan and China for the future of East Asian FTA. In 2006 Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla linked the concepts of Asian values with the proposed East Asian Free Trade Agreement and East Asian Community arising from the East Asia Summit. He defined Asian values as placing emphasis on co-operation over competition. Asian values contain various contents. Maybe, we can consider them as ‘non-European values' which comprehend Islamism in the Middle East, Indian Hinduism, and Buddhism in Southeast Asia. However, a recent scholarly research is concentrated on ‘Confucian values' in close relation with economic growth in East Asia. First attempt to explain the economic model of these ‘Third World' countries, in parallel with those of American and European 'First World' countries and Soviet-bloc ‘Second World' countries began at the end of 1970s. It is Herman Kahn who contributes to link East Asian dynamic growth with Confucian culture. Kahn’s neo-Confucian hypothesis is that the countries of East Asia have common cultural roots going far back into history, and that under the world-market conditions of the past 30 years this cultural inheritance has constituted a competitive advantage for successful business activity. Herman Kahn's followers suggest that Confucian values are ‘the modern day Asian Protestant ethics.' With this cultural hypothesis adopted, we will reexamine Asian values such as statism or centralism of personalities in political leadership, familism, self-restraint, insistence on education, secularism, diligence, social obedience and unity, cooperation and harmony, etc., in comparison with European values. According to Montaigne, “comparaison n’est pas raison.” In effect, there can be no comparison between two heterogeneous Asian/European values, respectively cultivated in a different socio-cultural, or historical context. Thus, on account of limit space, we will focus our attention first on Protestant/Confucian ethics; second on the ‘homogeneity' and ‘heterogeneity' in two disparate values in giving priority to so-called ‘East Asian values'; and finally on the perspective on two cultural identities and their role in European Union and in East Asian economic cooperation in wider and looser sense. According to Lee, a ‘formal regional integration in the form of a preferential trading bloc' in East Asia is neither feasible nor beneficial to the region. As a way of bringing about regional economic cooperation, East Asian region (China, Japan, and South Korea) should create institutions that would provide ‘regional public goods.' Why not create cultural values, if necessary?