The Bogeyman of the "West"

Former Youth PAP member and current Nominated MP Calvin Cheng made his debut on the floor of Parliament recently, delivering what the Straits Times deemed a "hard-hitting" speech, but really more of the same from the PAP playbook of "Asian Values" and espousing our unique culture over "apeing the West".

'International recognition will also not come from aping the West. I strongly believe that it would be futile to try to be the New York of the East, or the Las Vegas of Asia, or build a Harvard of the East. In this globalised world, people are highly mobile - if the original is so easily reachable, there is no attraction in the replica.

'If one can hop on a plane and visit the real Paris, why visit the Paris of the East? This is I think a common misconception that many Singaporeans still have, that West is best, and that imitation of the West is the same as being global and modern.'

Despite his best intentions, I believe Mr Cheng has gotten it the other way around; the attraction of the original is not because of ease of access, but because it is the original. There is nothing wrong with being labelled as the New York of the East, unless you feel offended that we are compared to a cosmopolitan, progressive city coloured by many different cultures. That is not what we should specifically be aiming for, but to be labelled as such is not a pejorative, just because it is a Western city.

Which is what his speech appears to be designed to do: appeal to our "Asian" pride and casting the "West" as a bogeyman, a dream that we should not be chasing, without recognising the merits that constitutes the ideas that marks New York and Paris as the best of their kind. It is the ideas that matter, not "Asian Values" or a false "East vs West" dichotomy that blatantly chooses to ignore good ideas and ideals that can be be plucked from anywhere.

Why not marry the progressive ideas like freedom of speech with the much-vaunted "Asian value" of hard work? And why is that goal "apeing" the West or "Westernisation", when it is a noble goal to strive for? It does not matter where the good ideas come from, as long as they are good ideas. Preaching this "East vs West" philosophy is no different from George W. Bush calling Iran part of the "Axis of Evil" or Iran calling the US "The Great Satan": absurd, self-defeating and an obstruction of progress.

Donaldson Tan also hits back, and he does so far more convincingly than I can.

[T]he East-West dichotomy is a social construction. Great ideas, values and best practices will stand the test of time regardless of its origin and it will find acceptance beyond the geographical region of its origin. This acceptance will manifest in terms of culture whether it is at the workplace, leisure grounds and during intellectual discourse.

Our challenge is to relentlessly ensure that we do not shut ourselves out of examining ideas that work. Failure is really not an option for us in the long run.