Asian Morality

Having lived in an Asian country for two years now, I can say with some authority that, in general, East Asian countries haven't thought through issues of morality and human rights as clearly or thoroughly as Western countries have. Japan's idea of morality tends to focus solely on economic issues - getting everyone a stable job and food on the table - and to ignore social issues like women's rights, corruption, mafia influence, prostitution, family breakdown, corporate abuses of employees, youth issues, etc. China is probably even farther behind in its concern for individuals' quality of life. Of all countries in the region, only South Korea seems to have made significant progress in promoting the fair treatment of individuals - and South Korea has an evil twin to the north whose abuses tend to overshadow all of the South's advances.

So what should the United States do about this state of affairs? Economically, Asia is the fastest-growing region, home to America's only real nation-state peer (China). Militarily, the region was the site of America's three bloodiest wars of the 21st Century, and will continue to be a powder keg. Protecting our interests in Asia means spreading our way of thought, our idea of human rights and personal dignity and freedom, to those countries. But beyond that, our country's raison d'etre, its fundamental mission, is to promote the ideals upon which our nation was founded - and what more fertile ground for those ideals exists in the world than the 1/3 of humanity living in the relatively stable, growing states of East and Southeast Asia?

Which brings me to a couple of articles I've read recently. In this diatribe against South Korean apathy, Sung-Yoon Lee blasts South Korean leaders who failed to vote on a UN resolution condemning North Korean human rights abuses. I agree with him in spirit, but in practice is he preaching sound policy? South Korea has focused its efforts on engaging and opening up the North, rather than on threatening it with sanctions and war (the George Bush approach). Horrible as North Korea's abuses are, South Korea may just have the right idea. Remember, South Korea itself was a military dictatorship when the U.S. took the young country under its Cold War wing, and only after three decades of close economic and political ties did South Korea become a democracy. In that case, keeping the bad guy close instead of isolating it worked wonders in the long term - might not the same work with North Korea? I'm not one to argue for appeasement, but it seems apparent to me that if the South can succeed in opening the North to trade and migration, the dictatorial regime will quickly be forced to either modernize or collapse. At a time when the U.S.-South Korea alliance is fraying badly, I think we'd do better to support the South's policy than to put our faith in empty U.N. bluster.

The second article is this article by Richard Cohen on U.S. corporations' facilitation of Chinese human rights abuses. Companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have been modifying their applications to filter out references to anything the Chinese government doesn't like individuals to talk about - like "human rights" or the Dalai Lama. In some cases, Yahoo even gives the Chinese government the personal information of users who discuss these subjects, leading to the imprisonment of dissidents. This kind of behavior may make companies like Yahoo a few dollars in the short term, but in the long term it undermines world confidence in U.S. support for human rights, sets a bad example for emerging Chinese companies, and directly harms innocent people. If we're willing to condemn Nike for operating sweatshops in Indonesia, we ought to be willing to condemn Yahoo for helping the Chinese government put innocent people in jail. American companies should be expected to behave like Americans.

Both of these situations are examples where the U.S. needs to take an active role in promoting human rights in Asia. In both cases, we have the chance to teach Asian societies about the benefits that human rights bring - improvements in individual dignity and fulfillment, increased motivation of the workforce, and a feeling of security and confidence throughout all society. The approach of "teaching human rights" would be more effective than pointless redundant condemnation (in the case of North Korea) or profiteering collaboration (in the case of China). For the sake of world stability, human happiness, and U.S. prestige, human rights should be our number one export to Asia.