Authoritarian Modernism in East Asia

137 Pages·2015·1.993 MB·English

by  Mark R. Thompson

SECURITY, DEVELOPMENT AND
HUMAN RIGHTS IN EAST ASIA
Series Editor: Brendan Howe
AUTHORITARIAN
MODERNISM
IN EAST ASIA
Mark R. Thompson
Security, Development and Human
Rights in East Asia
Series Editor
Brendan Howe
Graduate School of International Studies
Ewha Womans University
Seoul, Korea (Republic of)
This series focuses on the indissoluble links uniting security, development
and human rights as the three pillars of the UN, and the foundation of
global governance. It takes into account how rising Asia has dramatically
impacted the three pillars at the national, international and global levels of
governance, but redirects attention, in this most Westphalian of regions,
to human-centered considerations. Projects submitted for inclusion in the
series should therefore address the nexus or intersection of two or more of
the pillars at the level of national or international governance, but with a
focus on vulnerable individuals and groups. The series targets postgradu-
ate students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners of development stud-
ies, international relations, Asian studies, human rights and international
organizations.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14488
Mark R. Thompson
Authoritarian
Modernism in East
Asia
Mark R. Thompson
Department of Asian and International Studies
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia
ISBN 978-1-137-51166-9 ISBN 978-1-137-51167-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51167-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960394
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Détail de la Tour Eiffel © nemesis2207/Fotolia.co.uk
This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature America,
Inc.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
P a
reface and cknowledgments
The general significance of the study of authoritarian modernity is that it
raises doubts about the assumption of modernization theory that an
advanced economy with extensive social differentiation is incompatible
with authoritarian rule, which is of course of particular importance when
thinking about China’s future. This book makes the claim, as Barrington
Moore Jr. famously argued more than a half century ago, that there is a
conservative authoritarian “route to the modern world.” In East Asia
(Northeast and Southeast Asia), the examples of South Korea and Taiwan
democratizing after successful economic development are often cited as
vindication of modernization theory’s claim that democratic transition is
“driven by growth.” But given recent critiques of the cross-national, his-
torical evidence marshaled in support of this strong, or “endogenous”
version of modernization theory, East Asia can be seen as the “last
redoubt” of the theory that economic growth, social differentiation, and
political mobilization will ultimately lead to a transition to democracy. It
is a “soothing scenario,” as James Mann has termed it, in regard to China.
The importance of Singapore, which has one of the region’s most advanced
economies, is often dismissed. The Southeast Asian city-state is considered
too small to be a significant anomaly (although recent research shows
small countries are more likely to be democratic). Singapore’s authoritar-
ian leadership launched a “Learn from Japan” campaign in the late 1970s
and Singapore itself has, in turn, become a model for China as a guide to
authoritarian persistence during economic modernization.
In this book I argue that East Asian authoritarian modernism is charac-
terized by an economically reformist but politically conservative leadership
v
vi PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
(with key leaders being Meiji Japan’s Itō Hirobumi, Singapore’s Lee Kuan
Yew, and China’s Deng Xiaoping) which has attempted to learn the
“secrets” of authoritarian rule in a modern society (from Imperial
Germany, Meiji Japan, and Singapore, respectively). These lessons are
about how to establish an “ethical” form of rule (originally inspired by the
German political economist Lorenz von Stein, who tutored the first Meiji
Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi), claim reactionary culturalist legitimation
(using Confucian traditions as a particularistic argument aimed against the
universalizing pretensions of “Western” liberalism and democracy), and
maintain a demobilized civil society (with capitalists dependent on the
state, the middle class co-opted, and the working class repressed).
Becoming authoritarian modern is no easy undertaking, however.
Failed cases of would-be modernizing authoritarians include highly per-
sonalized, corrupt regimes that inhibited economic upgrading and made
their countries prone to financial crises (the Philippines and Indonesia)
and even countries that achieved advanced economic status but which still
faced a legitimation crisis and a highly mobilized civil society (South Korea
and Taiwan). The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambition to create
resilient authoritarian rule and escape the “modernization trap” is the
most important political transformation in the region and the world today.
In doing so, leading Chinese officials and academics have studied the
“Singapore model” in the attempt to learn how to become authoritarian
modern through policy change and new legitimation strategies. A key part
of this effort is, following the Singaporean, and indirectly the Meiji
Japanese, example, invoking cultural particularism to ward off Western
political influences, which the CCP is cautiously adding to its armory of
justifications for its continued rule alongside a reaffirmation of Marxism
and the invocation of nationalism. The book thus argues that there are
important historical precedents for successful authoritarian modernity in
East Asia with much learning attempted between countries. With China it
is home to the most important country that is rapidly modernizing while
attempting to remain authoritarian in the world today.
This short book has been relatively long in the making. Having unex-
pectedly become an academic administrator shortly after Palgrave reviewed
and accepted this book project proposal and draft chapters, I have labored
to balance departmental interests with my academic writing. I am grateful
to Palgrave for indulging me for over three years to finish this project
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
despite this book being included in their pivot series designed for fast
publishing turnaround!
This project has both endogenous and exogenous origins. I have been
working with my former Ph.D. student and now City University of Hong
Kong colleague Stephan Ortmann on a project about China’s “Singapore
Model” for the past several years. As this research progressed, I became
increasingly convinced that the key to understanding China’s interest was
due less to its hope to learn how to reform governance by adopting poli-
cies that they believed made the tiny Southeast Asian city-state “perfectly
managed.” Rather, it was primarily ideological in nature. Chinese observ-
ers sought reinforcement of their belief that authoritarianism could con-
tinue to be justified once substantial economic advancement had been
achieved and rapid growth alone would no longer be a sufficient form of
pragmatic legitimation. I coined the phrase “authoritarian modernism” in
the course of this research and looked for an outlet to discuss the historical
and comparative context of this form of rule in East Asia.
This in turn took me back to an earlier project on “Asian values” which,
although focused on the Singaporean ruling elites’ “reactionary cultural-
ism” in the 1990s, explored how it could be traced back in terms of to the
“Zivilisationskritik” of Imperial Germany which contrasted German
“Kultur” with Western (French but also English) “civilization.” This sug-
gests that this discourse is not really about “Asia” versus the “West,” but
authoritarian as opposed to liberal-democratic modernity.
The exogenous origins were my conversations with my friend and
Ewha Women’s University colleague Brendan M. Howe, who encour-
aged me to pursue the project, submit it for possible publication to his
Palgrave pivot series, and invited me to present the project as keynote
speaker to the “New Authoritarianism in Asia” conference, hosted by the
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea,
March 3, 2016, where I received valuable feedback with a revised version
of the talk published in the December 2016 issue of the Asian Studies
Review. Earlier, encouraged by Michael Hill, I laid out some of the key
ideas presented in this book in an article published in the Asian Journal
of Social Science, 38, no. 5 (2010). I also presented some of the concepts
in this book in a talk at the University of Basel in May 2015 where I ben-
efitted from the critiques offered. Most recently, I wrote a chapter “From
Japan’s ‘Prussian path’ to China’s ‘Singapore Model,’” outlining some of
the themes discussed here in an important book edited by my City
University friend and colleague Toby Carroll and Hong Kong Education
viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
University’s Darryl Jarvis, Asia after the Developmental State:
Disembedding Autonomy, CUP 2017. I learned much about Ito Hirobumi
from the writings of, and in my conversations with, Kazuhiro Takii of the
International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto. I am also
grateful to Lily Rahim and Michael Barr for inviting me to the workshop
“Governance in Singapore” held at the University of Nottingham,
Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, in February 2016 where I presented a paper
“Singapore and the Lineages of Authoritarian Modernity in East Asia,”
which is to be published in a volume edited by Michael and Lily,
Governance in Singapore: Reform without Democratisation (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2018). Although we agreed to dis-
agree, I also profited from my discussion with Henry Rowen while I was
Lee Kong Chian Southeast Asia fellow at Stanford University in 2008.
My colleague and friend in the Department of Asian and International
Studies at the City University of Hong Kong, Daniel Lynch, who has been
a major influence on my thinking in this book, kindly read over several
chapters of this manuscript. I am also grateful to another friend/colleague
(both at the National University of Singapore and at City University),
Brad Williams, a Japanese specialist, who also kindly read over much of the
manuscript. I have also learned much from other (past and current) col-
leagues at City University: Paul Cammack, Romain Carlevan, Toby
Carroll, Bill Case, Kobe Chan, Yuk-wah Chan, Yanto Chandra, Melody
Chong, Renaud Egreteau, Eric Chui, Federico Ferrara, Ray Forrest, Doug
Fuller, Julia Han, Keiko Hatazawa, Roger Huang, Jiang Yi-huah, Gong
Ting, Ruben Gonzales Vicente, Denise van der Kamp, Ina Karas, Kyaw
Yin Hlaing, Graeme Lang, Heidi Law, Linda Li, Jonathan London, Danny
Marks, Diana Mendoza, Kevin Miao Bo, Reuben Mondejar, Sunyoung
Oh, Tom Patton, Diane Pecorari, Pang Qin, Marivic Raquiza, Danilo
Reyes, Fan Ruiping, Sean Starrs, Bill Taylor, Joy Tadios Arenas, Nick
Thomas, Linda Yin-nor Tjia, Richard Walker, Xiaolin Wang, Brad Williams,
Ray Yep, Ngai-ming Yep, Wei Lit Yew, Xiaowei Zang, and Jun Zhang. I
would also like to thank the AIS general office manager, Teresa Tong, for
her administrative efficiency and support, allowing me time for research,
as well as expressing my appreciation to Angel Ho, Lillian Lam, Ling
Chan, Helena Tse, Mavis Yeung, Sau-kuen Chan, and Alan Cheung.
Furthermore, I would like to thank other colleagues and friends who have
encouraged me in this and related work over the years: Eric Batalla, Marco
Buente, Houchang Chehabi, Yin-Wah Chu, Michael Connors, Randy
David, Larry Diamond, Don Emmerson, Thomas Froehlich, Cherian
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
George, Ina Habermann, Darryl Jarvis, Kevin Hewison, Alisa Jones, Oskar
Kurer, Michael Lackner, Eun-Jeung Lee, Juan J. Linz, Donald Low,
Francisco Magno, Matthias Niedenführ, Ooi Kee Beng, Pang Qin, Damian
Quinn, Antoinette Raquiza, Richard Robison, Garry Rodan, Thomas
Saalfeld, Guenter Schubert, James Scott, Anna Szilagyi, Julio Teekankee,
James Warren, and Suisheng Zhao. I wish to acknowledge two Strategic
Research Grants Stephan Ortmann and I received from the City University
of Hong Kong to pursue our research on China’s “Singapore model” and
thank Yang Kai, our research assistant in that project, for his help in locat-
ing relevant Chinese-language sources and also for his substantive contri-
butions to our understanding of China’s “Singapore model.”
Last and foremost, I would like to thank my dad and stepmom, Richard
and Jane Thompson, my daughters Clara and Milena Suenskes Thompson,
my brother David Thompson, his husband Luis Tamayo, and their son
Lucas Jakori Tamayo Thompson for being so supportive and loving from
afar.
Hong Kong Mark R. Thompson
August 2018