Kishore Mahbubani - Asia West divide disappearing

In his latest book, Kishore is saying that the Asia West divide, or the poor Asia and rich West divide is diminishing with more Asians joining the ranks of middle class. The dominance of the West will fade and they will have to accept the rise of the East to meet somewhere in the middle, a convergence of sort, so he said.

During a launch of his book in Shangri La he took questions on his book. One question stood out and deemed important enough to be quoted in the ST. NUS Law Dean, Simon Chesterman, wondered why Kishore ‘seemed’ to be ‘too soft’ on the East but ‘approriately harsh’ on the West’s foibles. It was a common and accepted position that it should be the other way. And I like Kishore’s reply. ‘That’s because there is still no level playing field,… and unless you get into the West’s face, you will not be heard.’

The question and the answer told a lot about the biases of the two men, one basically a westerner who still sees the world with the West as the dominant partner and another wanting to tell the West that this cannot be anymore. The West has been talking down to the Asians, lecturing them with their biased version of the truth or what is reality. If you read what is being churned out by the western media, you cannot get away from this simplistic mindset that the Asians are all dull, stupid, belligerent, corrupt, naïve and incapable of looking after themselves and needing the West to save them. And the West will be the master to tell the Asians who is the good guy, who is the bad guy and these will be confirmed by the thrash they printed through their media agencies as intelligent stuff from intelligent or intellectual jokers, a lot from the academia as well.

Kishore said it right. The Asians would have to crawl their fingers through the weaterner’s faces to open their eyes and ears to listen to the Asian’s point of view. They have been drowning out the voices of Asians for too long and thinking that all their rubbish would still be swallowed, hook, line and sinkers. Unfortunately they are still allowed to do so in our media.

Also unfortunately, there are not enough of Asians like Kishore to fill our academia and we are still importing a lot of pseudo western intellectuals and booting out Asians as NG. And we are using taxpayers’ money to pay them generously while our local academics ended up driving taxis. And also unfortunately the realities in the way we pay the western talents as if they are the only talents in this world negates whatever Kishore is writing in his book. The Asia West divide is still there and it is the silly Asians that is making this divide happening by worshipping the Great White Gods. Don’t blame the West, and not so fast, the Asians are still inferior in their thinking and thinking that they are inferior to the West and are happily sucking up to the West. Only one Asian, other than Kishore, would dare to lecture to the West. Also unfortunately he often sees the world like he is a westerner with western world view and interests as the basis for what is good or bad.

Sorry Kishore, your book is a bit ahead of time.