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FROM TRIUMPHALISM TO THE ‘NEW DEAL’:
TUN DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD AND THE ASIAN CENTURY1
Sven Alexander Schottmann
Doctoral Candidate, Monash Asia Institute, Monash University
[email protected]
Will this be the Asian century?
The economic history of the twentieth century is marked by two important
processes. The first is the sheer unstoppable advance of global capitalism. The second
is the emergence, or rather, re-emergence of Asia after circa four-hundred years of
near-complete submission to Europe and its colonial outposts in North America and
Australasia. The phenomenal recovery of postwar Japan along with Southeast Asia’s
long economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s, and the rise of first China and then India
over the past three decades have lastingly reconfigured the global balance of power. It
is in the larger context of these shifting economic and political structures that the
question of whether the twenty-first century will be Asia’s century must be
approached.
This paper addresses itself to this subject, which is also the theme of the 17th
Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, through an
1
This paper was presented to the 17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of
Australia in Melbourne 1-3 July 2008. It has been peer reviewed via a double blind referee process and
appears on the Conference Proceedings Website by the permission of the author who retains copyright.
This paper may be downloaded for fair use under the Copyright Act (1954), its later amendments and
other relevant legislation.
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analysis of the engagement with this question on the part of Malaysia’s former Prime
Minister Tun Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad. Along with Singapore’s Minister Mentor
Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Mahathir has remained closely identified with the mid-1990s
argument that circumscribed democracy and a communitarian spirit could help
account for Southeast Asia’s prosperity and growth. Liberal democracy and the open
society, conversely, were depicted as Western imports not automatically suited to the
needs of the developing, ethnically complex societies of Asia.
Malaysia and Singapore (as well as other countries such as Indonesia, which
also participated in this debate) approached the thematic from different angles and
pursued different lines of the argument. Nonetheless, the proponents of ‘the Asian
way’ regularly sought to underscore their case with references to the increasing
prosperity of Asia’s consumerist societies on the one hand, and on the other hand, the
bloated, morose welfare states of Western Europe, or the breakdown of law-and-order
in North American cities. Indeed, urban insecurity and lack of civility in the public
sphere were a major socio-cultural point of criticism of leaders such as Dr Mahathir,
who regularly spoke of the continued cultural refinement of Malay(sian)s and other
Asians despite rapid economic transformations experienced by their societies.
Easterners still value traditions and etiquette. They still emphasise
communal wellbeing. While individuals have rights, these are not
allowed to undermine the wellbeing of society as a whole: nakedness,
cohabitation, neglecting traditional ways, drug abuse and
unwillingness to work are unacceptable to Eastern societies. On the
other hand, politeness, observing etiquette, respecting the needs of
society and family, traditional ways and diligence are highly respected
and practised. For these reasons … the societies of a number of eastern
countries are now safer, more secure and more advanced than those of
the West.2
Coinciding with the period of sustained economic growth in Southeast and
East Asia, and the stagnation of many mature Western economies during the mid1990s, this became known as the “Asian values” debate. Marked by European and
North American soul-searching as well as new-found self-confidence among many
Asians, the time also saw a flurry of academic and non-academic publications
addressing themselves to the expectation that after almost two centuries of
2
Mahathir (1983a)
2
3
‘Atlanticism,’ the Pacific Rim would now emerge as the connecting node of a new
global Mediterranean. Some of the better-known popular titles included Frank
Gibney’s 1992 The Pacific Century or John Naisbitt’s 1995 Megatrends Asia: The
eight Asian megatrends that are changing the world. Incidentally, both books can be
found in the personal collection of Tun Dr Mahathir and are on display at his office in
Putrajaya. In some of his speeches, Dr Mahathir likewise referred to David
Hitchcock’s survey of Asian-Western differences in ‘societal’ and ‘personal values’
that emerged as a key document of the Asian values debate.3
This essay will examine Dr Mahathir’s pronouncements on the roles of Asia
and Asians in the new global order based. It is based on a comprehensive analysis of
his speeches and writings, of which I have collected more than a thousand. Apart from
evaluating Dr Mahathir’s statements, this essay will also examine how his assertion
that Asia offered an alternative to the Western model was received by Malaysia’s
multicultural people.4 In particular, this paper will look at how Dr Mahathir’s
championing of ‘Asian values’ or ‘Eastern culture’ sat with his longstanding Malay
nationalism as well as his government’s concurrent Islamisation policies. The parallel
rise of ‘Asian values’ and Islamisation seem only initially as a contradiction. As this
paper will show, both emphasized similar issues – the facilitation of rapid economic
growth, a communitarian spirit and the deferment of individual gratification – and
may therefore actually be seen as the strategic inverse of one another. In many ways,
‘Asian values’ and Islamisation reinforced each other’s objectives and were ideally
suited to send the same message to different audiences.
Dr Mahathir’s political rhetoric seems to be marked by the increasing presence
of Asia. For example, while he mentioned ‘Asia’ in only a single speech in 1981, Dr
Mahathir would refer to ‘Asia’ in thirteen speeches by 1996. Throughout the late
1990s, between ten and fifteen of his major speeches annually were devoted to the
subject of a resurgent Asia. Altogether, one hundred and twenty-five of Dr Mahathir’s
speeches deal with Asia, its people and their relationships with the rest of the world.
These speeches are complemented by published monographs such as The New Deal
for Asia (1999), Reflections on Asia (2002), and the jointly-authored The Voice of
3
E.g. Mahathir (1995)
According to the latest census data available, Malaysia’s population of Malays and non-Malay
indigenous communities make up about sixty-five percent of the population. Ethnic Chinese represent
twenty-six percent, Indians of largely southern Indian origin eight percent. Source: ‘Malaysia National
Census 2000,’ Department of Statistics Malaysia, available URL:
http://www.statistics.gov.my/english/frameset_census.php?file=pressdemo, accessed 27 August 2008.
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Asia: Two Asian Leaders Discuss the Coming Century (1995), published in Japanese
under the more robust title The Asia That Can Say No.
Even such a limited quantitative content analysis reveals a notable increase in
the presence of Asia in Dr Mahathir’s political rhetoric over the period 1981-2003.
Why did this happen? What did Dr Mahathir mean when he spoke about ‘Asia?’ What
was Malaysia’s role, embedded, in but at the same time also encapsulating Asia in
microcosm? What predictions did Dr Mahathir make about the future? Would the
twenty-first century be the Asian century? Did this have anything to do with the
‘Asian values’ he was propagating? What was the role of Islam? How did his
government’s Islamisation policy sit with the talk of an Asian renaissance? These are
some of the major questions this paper seeks to address.
Phase 1: The absent Asia
Between the 1940s and the early 1980s, Asia was absent from Dr Mahathir’s
writings and speeches. There are no references to Asia in his major works of the
period, including a 1964 English-language essay titled ‘Interaction-Integration,’
which examines the tensions between Islam and the largely pre-Islamic adat or
customary practise of the peninsular Malays. There is not much mention of Asia in the
The Malay Dilemma (1971) or the Guide for Small Businessmen (1974) either. While
Dr Mahathir famously criticised the continued economic marginalisation of the
Malays in newly-independent Malaya, he made no apparent attempt during this phase
to connect Malay disenfranchisement to Asia-wide or even global parallels, as he
would in later phases.
Unlike the increasingly vocal leftist critics of the global order, Dr Mahathir
never questioned the underlying rules of the game. He did not advocate socialist
utopia; rather he called only for a level-playing field that would give developing
countries a chance to prosper under the free market. Instead of rejecting the inflow of
Western capital into Malaya/Malaysia,5 Dr Mahathir wanted more of it – but simply
on equitable terms. While ‘Asia’ was absent during this first phase, the Western world
was present at two levels in Dr Mahathir’s rhetoric. On the one hand, ‘Western’ was
shorthand for a ‘modern’ way of looking at the world, while the rural culture of the
5
Gaining independence from Britain in 1957, the Federation of Malaya was renamed Malaysia
in 1963 when the Malay Peninsula was amalgamated with three other previous British colonies in
Southeast Asia. Singapore exited Malaysia in 1965, but the Bornean federal states of Sabah and
Sarawak have remained parts of the enlarged Malaysia.
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5
Malays implicitly represented the old-fashioned, superstition-ridden ways of the past
that had facilitated Asia’s colonisation in the first place. On the other hand, Dr
Mahathir clearly stated that Asia’s spiritual traditions, in the case of the Malays their
Islamic faith, could help them and other non-Westerners6 “distinguish between the
good and evil of Western culture.”7
Although Asia remained absent as a term, Dr Mahathir’s critique of the West
for its double-standards and hypocrisy – core themes of his political worldview that
would endure throughout his political life – can be discerned even during this initial
period. One of his earliest speeches as freshman Member of Parliament indicates this:
Patent laws were drafted during colonial times in the interest of the
European colonisers. These laws only afford protection to strong
countries from economically weak countries, which [in] itself is
strange and unjust. But when [Western governments] feel [patent]
rights affect their own people negatively, they don’t hesitate to
change the rules or to exclude themselves, as the British have
recently done.8
Dr Mahathir has evidently long been incensed over the manifest injustice of these
double-standards. As he told the 1982 general assembly of the United Nations:
The age of empires and imperial powers is practically over. But the
world has not as yet become a better place for the previously
colonised.9
Although Dr Mahathir’s criticism stayed the same, the spatial categories and
geographical classifiers which he employed to express his criticisms have changed.
‘Asia’ does not appear as a major classifier until the 1980s, when it replaced Dr
Mahathir’s established contrasts between ‘poor and rich nations,’ ‘previous colonizers
and previously colonized,’ or ‘the advanced North and the struggling South.’ While
he maintained the same argument of geo-cultural difference and geopolitical injustices,
‘Asia’ only became a notable category and a distinguishable element of his rhetoric in
the 1980s.
6
Dr Mahathir’s usage of terms such as ‘Easterners’ during this first phase did not suggest
cultural commonality. It seemed to be merely the lowest common denominator that was defined largely
in opposition to ‘Westerners.’
7
Mahathir’s 20 July 1947 letter to the Sunday Times, reproduced in Abdul Kadir (1995:3).
8
Malaysian House of Representatives (1964: col. 726)
9
Mahathir (1982b)
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6
Some of the reasons for the absence of references to Asia during the first four
decades of the speech and writings examined here include the communitarian political
structures of newly-independent Malaya/Malaysia, which did not facilitate the
emergence of a supra-ethnic consciousness beyond the parochial issues of race,
language and religion. Another factor was the conservatism of Kuala Lumpur’s top
leadership, which remained suspicious of the ‘third-worldist’ kind of political rhetoric
it instinctively associated with its arch-rival in Jakarta. Finally, memories of the
Pacific War and the bloody inter-ethnic clashes after the Japanese occupation in the
erstwhile British territories of Southeast Asia were still too fresh to enable the
emergence of a supra-ethnic Asian consciousness.
Asian intellectuals beyond Malaya/Malaysia had been experimenting with the
concept of a pan-Asian cultural identity since the late nineteenth century (cf. Milner &
Johnson 1997:1-19). Before the 1980s, however, there was clearly insufficient middle
ground between Malaysia’s Malay-Muslim, Chinese, Indian, Iban, Kadazandusun and
Eurasian populations to create a viable supra-ethnic ‘Malaysian’ identity – much less
a plausible ‘Asian’ identity that extended across the continent as a whole. During this
period, there was also certainly insufficient self-assuredness to support the
championing of the ‘Asian way.’ That was to come only in the following phase.
Phase 2: The discovery of Asia
The 1980s were a pivotal decade, marking the beginning of both Malaysia’s
tremendous economic growth, as well as the beginning of its somewhat paradoxical
sociopolitical transformations towards a country at once ‘more Islamic’ and ‘more
Malaysian.’ The early 1980s also heralded the beginning of the second phase in Dr
Mahathir’s engagement with Asia. This is the period of Dr Mahathir’s ‘discovery’ of
Asia and its virtues, when (in almost complete inversion of classical modernization
theory) Asia’s cultural characteristics were listed as the true reasons for its economic
growth.
Asianness was now posited as conservative social values such as familyorientation, but also a communitarian spirit and consensus-mindedness in decisionmaking. All of these, Dr Mahathir seemed to suggest, were irreconcilably opposed to
the values of Western liberalism including individualism, permissiveness and lack of
discipline.
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[Westerners] don’t work hard anymore and prefer to relax. Through
their unions, western workers demand all kinds of comforts, to the
extent that Western countries pay higher allowances to those on the
dole than those who work. Because of that, many choose not to
work.10
Buoyed by Eastern successes and a Western world mired in strikes, unemployment,
protests, growing poverty, crime, the unraveling of society and economic meltdown
(at least, this is how it seemed from the perspective of the average Malaysian
newspaper reader) Dr Mahathir began to speak about Asia not merely as an alternative
to the Western order, but about Asia replacing the West.
The way Asia would get there would be by sheer demographic weight, but
above all by hard-work, discipline, the privileging of communal harmony over
personal freedoms and the willingness to forego the immediate gratification of desires.
These were social values which Dr Mahathir could discern across Asian societies.
Together with the developmentalist state that delivered increasing prosperity but was
unencumbered by the excesses of western-style liberal democracy, these ‘Asian
values’ had been the secret to Japan’s phenomenal postwar recovery. In Dr Mahathir’s
view, ‘Asian values’ had underpinned the economic growth of Japan, along with the
rise of Tiger Economies like that of South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Malaysia identified what we believed to be the factors which
contributed towards Japan's success. They are the patriotism, discipline,
good work ethics, competent management system and above all the
close cooperation between the Government and the private sector. And
so we tried to adopt these practices and instil these cultures in our
people. And everyone now acknowledges that Malaysia has made
better progress than most other developing countries.11
Culturalist factors loomed large in the debate, but these were more than simply
Chinese successes. Dr Mahathir and other proponents of Asian values insisted that
these were Asian successes based on Asian ways of managing economics and politics.
Conversely, what appeared in the 1980s to be Asian failures such as the Philippines
and India, were reduced to their adoption of unsuitable Western concepts such as
10
11
Mahathir (1984)
Mahathir (2002b)
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liberal democracy or a free press.12 At the same time, ‘Asian values’ were more than
a cultural veneer for local authoritarianism. They implicitly also carried counterhegemonic claims to a strident Western universalism long underscored by its
unquestionable military and economic dominance. The post-war success stories of
Japan and the ‘Asian tigers,’ as well as ‘tiger cubs’ such as Indonesia, Thailand and
Malaysia were thus portrayed during the second phase as ready-made examples for
other developing countries to follow.
In Europe or America, there may well be much greater pluralism and
so-called freedom of the press, but in Asia it has been and will
continue to be, the good of the many rather than the selfishness of the
few or the individual that is treasured. That is the way democracy has
developed in many Asian countries and I believe this is going to be
the Asian form of democracy for the future as well.13
A key element of Dr Mahathir’s engagement with the subject of a resurgent
Asia and of Asian values during this second phase was the overarching quest for
authenticity. For almost a century, Asians had grappled with the question whether
progress and modernity could ever be truly Asian, or would they have to be
irreconcilably connected to the European experience? The Asian values debate, along
with Malaysia’s attendant policy of seeking to menyerap nilai-nilai Islam dalam
pentadbiran or ‘infuse Islamic values into government,’ is at one of its most basic
levels the attempt to formulate an autochthonous political identity that could finally
arrest the intellectual decline that had culminated in the colonial intervention. The
very ‘Asiatics’ and ‘Orientals,’ who until recently had been refused entry into the
colonialists’ clubs and who had been held irredeemably backwards, were now
growing from strength to strength. In the view of Dr Mahathir and other proponents of
Asian values, it had been the Asians’ holding fast to Asian social values which had
made this resurgence possible. As he elaborated in his 1999 book A new deal for Asia,
Personally, I never liked the term ‘East Asian miracle’ because it
seemed to imply that our accomplishments were achieved through
12
E.g. Mahathir (1996a), also Mahathir (1982a): “The Philippines was [ruled by] both Spanish
and Americans, and they felt so divorced from the other countries of Southeast Asia that in the eyes of
some people, they could hardly be considered Southeast Asian.”
13
Mahathir (1999:44)
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some form of magic rather than through the hard work, blood, tears
and genius of our peoples.14
Probably the best-known early policy directive of this second phase, heralding
in fact its arrival, was Kuala Lumpur’s instruction to Malaysians (and particularly
Malays) to ‘look East’ to the examples of Japan and South Korea.15 To speak of Asia
as a cultural unit and to move away from the image of the ethno-nationalistic Malay
ultra was a political tactic that probably didn’t aim to please, but ended up sitting very
well with Malaysia’s vital non-Malay communities that still represent more than forty
percent of the population.
This shift coincided with a gradual transformation of Malaysian identity
towards the more inclusive, supra-ethnic bangsa Malaysia that Dr Mahathir would
increasingly speak about by the beginning of the 1990s.16 Bangsa Malaysia would
finally be able to overcome the country’s century-long division between bumiputera
(‘princes of the land’) and descendants of migrants from China and South Asia.
Above all, all Malaysians would be Asians par excellence: self-confident and
thoroughly modern, enmeshed with the world and in touch with their various ancestral
traditions, but meaningfully united by ‘being-Asian.’ Even as Malaysia’s Islamisation
continued to gather pace, both bangsa Malaysia as well as the government’s
continued talk of Asian values meant that Malaysia, even beyond the purely economic,
remained a welcoming place for its non-Malay citizens. In fact, the ‘can do’ message
of the pragmatic, tolerant, pluralistic and this-worldly-oriented reading of Islam that
was encouraged by the government tallied with the basic ideas of both bangsa
Malaysia as well as the strong discipline and good work ethics which Dr Mahathir
was able to discern across all Asian cultures.
This was also the time that Dr Mahathir began to engage himself seriously
with the question of Asia’s future. Over Malaysia’s decade of ‘irrational exuberance’
between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, Dr Mahathir seemed convinced that the world
axis would tilt in Asia’s favour and that humanity was standing at the cusp of an
Asian or a Pacific Age. And many agreed with him – especially scholars of Asia As
he told his audience at the ASLI World Leadership Conference in Kuala Lumpur in
1994,
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15
16
Mahathir (1999:27)
E.g. Mahathir (1983b)
In particular: Mahathir (1991)
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We know that the 21st century will indeed be the Asian century. We
are moving into an age of Asian leadership as Asia emerges to become
one of the primary drivers of global economic growth. The rise of East
Asia is only natural and inevitable given the dynamism of countries in
this region.17
Phase 3: The Century of man
It is important to point out that Dr Mahathir seemed to have changed his views
on the inevitability of an Asian century even before the Asian Financial Crisis struck
Malaysia in 1997. Instead, in the middle of the unparalleled prosperity of the mid1990s, Dr Mahathir began to call for the establishment of a colour-blind, post-ethnic
world order. The Malaysian Prime Minister argued that humans everywhere should
work together to make the twenty-first century “the century of the world,” or the
“century of mankind.” As he told the Global Panel meeting in The Hague in 1996:
There are now many, especially from my part of the world, who
fervently believe that the twenty-first century will be the century of
Asia and should be the century of Asia. They believe that Asia will
inherit the future, will dominate the world. I believe that this is a
mirage wrapped in incredible arrogance. The century of Asia will not
come. The era of Asian dominance over this planet will not arrive.
This will not happen. Nor should we in Asia aspire to a new
hegemonism.18
Instead of the Asian century, Dr Mahathir argued that Asians should work together
with Africans, Europeans and Americans to make it the ‘century of the world’ or the
‘century of mankind.’ The world century would indeed herald the end of Anglo-Saxon
dominance over the world and would usher in an age of equality. As he told his
London audience in 1997:
The Century of the World will be an Age of Connectivity between
peoples, places, information, and ideas. In this context, Asia has a
special role to play in the creation of the World Century.19
Although connectivity itself may not automatically be equality, Asia’s increasing
enmeshment in the globalised world would allow history to run its natural course and
17
18
19
Mahathir (1994b)
Mahathir (1996c)
Mahathir (1997a)
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enable Asian societies to catch up with their counterparts in Europe and North
America.
While Dr Mahathir frequently expressed his hopes that not one single people
should inherit the world, he was convinced that Asia would play a more significant
role in the twenty-first century. As he told his audience at the 1996 Pacific Dialogue
in Kuala Lumpur:
We of Asia will increasingly demand and we have a right to demand a
little maturity and sophistication on the part of those who wish to
analyse and proselytise; who so easily slip into the role of policeman,
prosecutor, judge and jury; who so habitually try, judge, punish and
persecute without even giving us a hearing … Already, the Asia
Pacific is where sixty percent of the world is. On this planet, at this
time, already sixty percent of all the goods and services are produced
in the Asia Pacific. In the decades ahead, the economic centre
of gravity must shift towards Asia. 20
Dr Mahathir continued to insist on the need for cultural autonomy and the need for
cultural and discursive independence from the West. Only an Asia that was allowed to
develop along what he described as Asia’s own values could play the required role of
motor for global growth and prosperity. At the same time, Dr Mahathir underscored
the point that a resurgent Asia should not turn into an aggressive or arrogant Asia.
Phase 4: Disillusionment
Southeast Asia’s phenomenal growth rates of the 1980s and 1990s, and the
stridency with which the leadership of countries such as Malaysia and Singapore
claimed their economic successes for the Asian way, seem to have led some in the
West to question the universality of its historical experience.21 Conversely, the
Financial Crisis of the late 1990s seemed to have produced among a number of
Western commentators an almost palpable sigh of relief amid widespread
Schadenfreude. This was picked up by many in Asia as triumphant point-scoring with
racist undertones. In his angry 1998 lecture to the Harvard Club Malaysia, Dr
Mahathir was representative of such perceptions:
20
Mahathir (1996b)
E.g. the Tory leader David Howell encouraging Britain to adopt some of the values that had
made Asia’s economic growth possible (quoted in Thompson 2001:164 FN 5).
21
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12
It is impossible for our non-Asian foreign detractors to believe that
Asian Government leaders can be honest at all. If they do anything at
all for the good of their countries it must be because they are corrupt
and want to help their cronies and their families. These racist views
will persist. It must be remembered that these racists are the
descendants of the old white-supremacist colonialists. They cannot get
rid of their spots and stripes.22
Although Dr Mahathir had long been a critic of what he perceived as Western
hypocrisies, his increasingly difficult relationship with decision-makers in the West
(whom he held responsible for the Financial Crisis) loomed large in his engagement
with the question of whether the twenty-first century would be the Asian century. As
he wrote in his 2000 book The Malaysian Financial Crisis:
As one Frenchman said, the genie has been let out of the bottle and no
one ‘in the world’ can put it back in. 23
Dr Mahathir continued:
This is a remarkable admission considering that the people who let out
the genie are the same people who have appointed themselves as the
policemen of the world, the champions of human rights and justice for
the oppressed people in the world.24
Although glimpses of his proposal for the “century of mankind” or the “century of the
world” would resurface periodically throughout this fourth and final phase of his
engagement with Asia, the Financial Crisis and above all, his growing domestic and
international political isolation drove the Malaysian Prime Minister into making
increasingly angry statements that divided the world into stark binary classifications
based on phenotype.
Dr Mahathir looked to world history to argue that Europeans and Asians had
different ‘personalities.’ The ethnic Europeans, who are “very clever, brave and have
an insatiable curiosity,”25 could not but base their millennium of world dominance on
acquisitiveness. A prosperous and successful Asia, conversely, would preside over a
22
23
24
25
Mahathir (1998)
Mahathir (2000a:57)
Mahathir (2000a:57)
Mahathir (2003a)
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“peace without an imperium”26 and thrived because of its “prosper thy neighbour”27
philosophy. Even China, at the absolute height of its imperial power in the premodern era, had never impinged upon the territorial integrity of its neighbours, as Dr
Mahathir stated somewhat incongruously in 1994.28
Dr Mahathir’s earlier critique of Western greed and myopia was thus
increasingly undermined by a caustic, defiant and one-sided analysis that would
become a distinguishing mark of the fourth phase of his engagement with Asia. This
was, of course, also the period during which the talk of a global Jewish conspiracy
against predominantly Muslim Malaysia came to the fore.29 Despite its weaknesses,
Dr Mahathir’s pointing out of the inequities of the international economic order
during the three earlier phases had provided an articulate southern critique of the
excesses of northern capitalism. His earlier criticism had carried the promise of
“discovering alternatives to the Western narratives and Western conceptual
architecture” (Milner 1999).
Dr Mahathir’s pronouncements on Asia during the fourth phase, however,
ceased to reflect visions for a more just future for all of humankind. Instead, his vitriol
seemed addressed to specific segments of the Malaysian electorate such as the MalayMuslims, who had begun to desert the Prime Minister and his ruling coalition party.
During the fourth phase, there was little of the bold alternative narrative Dr Mahathir
had held out before. It had been Malaysia’s political crisis of his own making that
unraveled Dr Mahathir’s vision for the universalistic ‘century of mankind.’ His
engagement with Asia degenerated into an increasingly desperate defence of the ‘Old
Order,’ for which his government relied on the anti-Western sentiments mobilized
through its near-complete control over the Malaysian press landscape.
It makes sense to reconsider the political situation Dr Mahathir found himself
in during the late 1990s. On the one hand, his dismissed, tried and jailed erstwhile
deputy Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim had emerged as the undisputed defender of liberal
values, of the ‘Asian renaissance’ embedded within a universal humanism. Anwar
was even beginning to formulate a rival script to Dr Mahathir’s bangsa Malaysia that
would bring together Malaysia’s multi-cultural people. On the other hand, Dr
Mahathir’s core electoral constituency (i.e. ethnic Malays living in the over-weighted
26
27
28
29
Mahathir (1989)
Mahathir (2003b)
Mahathir (1994a)
E.g. Mahathir (2000b)
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rural constituencies) was increasingly starting to vote for the Islamist opposition PAS.
Instead of offering the visionary leadership he had prided himself on throughout the
1980s and the first half of the 1990s, Dr Mahathir was thus forced to chase the Malay
vote through attempting to mobilize ethno-nationalist sentiments. His engagement
with Asia thus ended on the same negative note that his engagement with Islam ended
in during the 1990s and reflected the same deeply flawed political strategy.
Conclusion
The above has been an overview of the evolving engagement we can observe
in Tun Dr Mahathir’s speeches on Asia, and how he responded to the question of
whether the twenty-first century would be the Asian century. In many ways, Dr
Mahathir’s engagement with Asia reflects his changing political fortunes and
circumstances. He began as an ethno-nationalist with little interest in a continental
identity, became a statesman and leader of a rapidly developing ‘tiger’ economy, and
ended his career as an increasingly isolated autocrat who resorted to cultural
arguments to validate authoritarian rule. Throughout the four phases we have
observed in his engagement with Asia, however, the ‘Asian values’ discourse as well
as its less developed predecessors fit neatly into Dr Mahathir’s overall political
worldview. He was looking for cultural factors to explain Asia’s successes in the
postwar world, just like he was looking to cultural factors to account for what he
perceived as the failures of the Malays. Values and mindset determined the success, or
otherwise, of a people, of a country and even of an entire continent.
Beyond ideological convictions, Dr Mahathir’s engagement with Asia was
also an astute political choice. To tap into Asian successes made clear sense at a
number of levels. In and beyond Malaysia, his advocacy of an ‘Asian way’
reverberated positively with ‘the man on the street.’ Abroad, Dr Mahathir came to be
seen as the man with the gumption to stand up to Western hegemony. It is still very
common for Malaysian overseas visitors to be given a ‘thumbs up’ for their leader’s
“courage” when in Damascus or Dhaka, but even in some predominantly Muslim
neighbourhoods of Brussels or Birmingham. At home, Dr Mahathir’s engagement
with a resurgent Asia had the net effect of underscoring the government’s project of
nurturing a supra-ethnic Malaysian national identity known as bangsa Malaysia. The
public imagery of bangsa Malaysia was distinctively pan-Asian, as bangsa Malaysia
brought together Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans, Kadazandusun and the many
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smaller ethnic groups of Malaysian in a harmonious blend of peoples, languages and
religions. Slogans such as ‘Malaysia, truly Asia’ were thus aimed as much at
international as at domestic audiences, hence Tourism Malaysia’s massive billboards
within Malaysia itself.
Speaking of Asia also provided cultural validation for the Mahathir
administration. Assailed on cultural grounds from the Islamists, speaking of ‘Eastern
identity’ or ‘Eastern values.’ ‘Asia’ could be deployed as a defensive strategy over
accusations of cultural contamination. In fact, ‘Asia’ and ‘properly understood Islam’
seem to have been used as each others strategic inverse. A comparison of the
treatment of ‘Asian values’ and ‘properly understood Islam’ in Dr Mahathir’s
speeches, writings and interviews shows great parallels. His criticism of the West’s
“hedonism, the love of pleasure and the gratification of the senses,” the “selfishness”
of its quest to gratify “base physical desires” and the very way in which “community
has given way to the individual and his desires”30 was easily juxtaposed to the
superior morality of either Asians or Muslims.
Dr Mahathir’s very this-worldly emphasis of what Islam was meant to achieve
for the individual believer tallied with what he saw as the underlying reasons for
Asia’s postwar success: obedience, emphasis on social harmony, placing the good of
the community above self-gratification, a sense of purpose, discipline and the steely
will to succeed. It was the continued presence of these values in Asian societies as
well as what Dr Mahathir called Asia’s role as “primary custodian of old fashioned
cultures, values and ways,”31 which entitled the continent’s inhabitants to the
leadership of the future – short-term setbacks such as the Asian Financial Crisis
notwithstanding.
30
31
Mahathir M. (1993), Speech at the Seminar on Muslim and Christian Minds, Kuala Lumpur,
14 September
Mahathir (1997b)
15
16
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