In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

President Obama’s May 19 speech about change in the Middle East raises some important and enduring conundrums about politics and identity that apply to Asia as well as the Middle East. The U.S. wants to be on the right side of history, and has newly embraced the demand for reform and democracy as a higher-order determinant of U.S. policy priorities than the earlier emphasis on stability.

Protesters in Egypt hold up home-made signs promoting Facebook. Photo by Essam Sharaf.

So change is now better than stability, at least in those places where the citizens demand it. It’s a very tricky process, to wean our official discourse and rhetoric from the past in those places where change has already occurred, and to preserve a more traditional posture where change has not happened, or where change may not be desirable from a U.S. point of view. The peaceful leadership transitions in Tunisia and Egypt were relatively easy to embrace; the violent upheavals in Libya and Yemen have resulted in international calls for leadership change, even without knowing what will follow. The crackdowns against protestors in Bahrain and Syria have kept us on the fence; we call for dialogue in the former and are slowly creeping to a call for President Assad to leave power in the latter. As the president’s recitation of this case-by-case approach indicated, in periods of dramatic transition, it’s hard to invoke universal principles when the realities of political change are messier and more confusing.

As posts in this blog informed us in recent weeks, Asians went through similar convulsions a generation ago, with some of the same outcomes. Youth protestors ousted a dictatorship in Indonesia, the revolution in the Philippines was a reminder that positive political change does not guarantee relief from poverty, and some authoritarian regimes hold on for longer than thought possible. The belief in a democratic tsunami is often belied by weather patterns that change course and affect different locales in distinctly different ways.

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Over the last months, the world has watched as uprisings and revolutions have spread across the streets and squares of the Arab world. In Egypt, entire families – mothers, wives, daughters, grandmothers, showed remarkable courage in standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their brothers, sons, and fathers in the face of black-clad riot police calling for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Youth in Syria, Libya, and beyond continue to risk their lives, calling for lower food prices, job opportunities, and, most importantly, political reform. The future of these nations is far from certain, but few can argue that the recent events mark one of the most dramatic global political developments since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The protests that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, and that are de-stabilizing other Arab regimes, have been youth-led and technology-enabled. Above, a protester waves a flag in Egypt's Tahrir square. Photo by M. Soli.

According to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center – the first major poll in Egypt since Mubarak’s ouster – “Egyptians are looking forward with extraordinary confidence and enthusiasm to their first free and fair elections this fall after the defining revolution of the Arab spring.” As the new president of The Asia Foundation, and former president of the American University in Cairo, this news, and the events that led to its unfolding, are powerful, instructive illustrations of what a lack of good governance, civic participation, and a functioning civil society can look like at full tilt. Our mission to improve governance and increase citizen participation in Asia requires we deeply examine the factors and forces that led to the sudden collapse of such entrenched regimes.

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Many observers both inside and outside China have come to perceive the country’s political system as remarkably resilient. Sustained economic growth, greater political responsiveness, and considerable public satisfaction with the status quo have seemingly created a high degree of political stability. This widely shared assessment of Chinese politics was reflected in the title of a recent op-ed in the International Herald Tribune comparing the situation in China with the “jasmine revolutions” in the Middle East: “Why It Won’t Happen in China.”

And yet, there is reason to believe that China’s own leaders are less confident about their country’s stability than these foreign observers. Recent crackdowns on political activists suggest to some a growing nervousness about the future. Are Chinese leaders worrying needlessly?  Or do they accurately perceive that their country’s political system may be subject to increasing strain?

Perhaps the most important cause for concern is the increasing level of inflation in China, the result of the flood of foreign capital into the country, China’s chronic foreign trade surpluses, growing labor shortages, and rising global prices for food, energy, and raw materials. If not brought under control, inflation has the potential to create a high degree of popular dissatisfaction. Over the last 20-odd years, China has been beset by numerous public protests over issues ranging from environmental pollution to contaminated food. But almost all of those grievances have been localized and the number of people affected by them has been limited. In contrast, inflation will affect virtually everyone in China, and is already leading to grumbling over rising energy costs and strikes for higher wages.

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“Bin Laden Dead: Muslim World Reacts,” announced ABC-TV. An Afghan rickshaw driver likened him to “a hero in the Muslim world.” Far from a hero, said a Pakistani professor, “he was a problem for the whole Muslim world.” “For the Muslim world,” his death was like the lifting of a curse, wrote the Islamic Society of North America. According to the staff of eCanadaNow, “the Muslim world is reeling” because Bin Laden was buried at sea in violation of the Muslim tradition that allows for that practice only if the deceased actually died there.

It is both intriguing and disconcerting that the death of one particular man, however iconic a figure he was and will remain, should trigger such a spate of imputations – as if the diverse 1.4 billion Muslims living in diverse circumstances that are in diverse ways and to varying degrees associated with this or that variety of Islam could possibly think and feel in any one single way.

What is “the Muslim world”? No agreed definition exists. The Muslim world that the Organization of the Islamic Conference says it represents, for example, is strictly official, consisting as the Conference does of 56 states plus Palestine. All of them are often referred to as Muslim-majority countries, but that description is incorrect. Of the 57 members, 10 do not have Muslim majorities, and two are borderline cases whose populations are apparently half-Muslim, half-not.

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Much has already been said about the parallels between Indonesia’s transition to democracy in the late 1990s, and protests in Egypt that led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February. Both are large, Muslim-majority countries, ruled for approximately three decades by authoritarian leaders who were ultimately toppled by popular, youth-led movements demanding greater democratic freedoms.

Indonesia’s own transition to democracy has been evolving for the past 13 years, and the country has made some remarkable achievements, though in some areas challenges remain. Above in Jakarta, farmers protest for additional rights. Photo by Jonathan McIntosh.

In both cases, the authoritarian president was relatively popular for a portion of his tenure, and brought significant development gains to his country before allowing family members and cronies to take a disproportionate share of the wealth, and before military repression of civil rights became intolerable. Economic suffering, unemployment, and poverty, in both cases, played a major catalytic role in the transition.

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Journalist David Ignatius recently wrote on Foreign Policy‘s website that the “Arab Spring” may be part of a “global political awakening,” a concept he borrows from former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Protesters in Egypt hold up home-made signs at protest rallies. Photo by Essam Sharaf.

If this is so, there are bound to be reverberations in Asia, but thus far, the biggest signs of this have been a political crackdown on dissent in China and evidence that North Korea is digging in its heels to resist steps toward denuclearization such as those that Libya took in 2003. The evidence of the impact of the Arab Spring on East Asia to date has come primarily in the form of backlash rather than contagion.

For every Twitter feed and Facebook post that might have worked in Egypt, there is a Chinese wall denying access to the Twitterverse in China. Chinese leaders seem to be well-versed at fending off color revolutions, be they orange revolutions from the Ukraine or jasmine revolutions from Egypt. North Korea’s nascent mobile phone network has created a symbol of a new elite, as cell phone ownership in North Korea had reportedly expanded to almost 400,000 by the end of 2010, a four-fold increase in just one year.

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Wael Ghonim is the 30-year-old Google marketing manager in Egypt who received considerable attention for his role in this year’s popular uprising in Egypt. At a recent TED conference, he reflected, “No one in Egypt was a hero; everyone was a hero; everyone contributed something.”

The ever expanding tide for more open societies is both historical, and a continuum. New communication technologies have helped strengthen collective action around protest movements, particularly most recently in Egypt and Tunisia. But there is another important ingredient in these demands for a better world and better institutions that is less recognized and that has been an influencing factor in the periphery: an increasing global desire for better quality of life resulting from products, values, education, and transparent institutions.

Was it not a plus to Ghonim’s credibility in the eyes of many that the youthful and self-effacing leader was known by his association with Google? Are not common values and beliefs discussed and fostered around tables at the local Starbucks in Cairo or Beijing? Or that cohesion and grounding and some synthesis of ideas flow from products and brands, whether emanating from Canon or Sony, Ford or Boeing, Apple or Microsoft, the NBA or PGA, the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, or National Geographic.

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“Revolution is in the air … and there are thousands of people demanding their universal human rights. …We are witnessing attempts to suppress the aspirations of the people and this lends an urgency to this year’s event, which will provide an exchange of ideas on the rapidly unfolding events and what can be done to shape positive outcomes,” said the Brookings Institution’s Martin Indyk at the opening of the 2011 U.S.-Islamic World Forum.

Hillary Clinton delivers a keynote speech at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum. Photo courtesy of U.S.-Islamic World Forum.

The Forum, convened by the Brookings Institution and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the State of Qatar, is currently taking place in Washington, D.C., with the participation of business leaders, analysts, journalists, and religious figures from more than 30 Muslim-majority countries and the United States. The focus of this year’s Forum is the rapid, turbulent change currently taking place across the Middle East and the implications for Muslims around the world.

The forum includes sessions on issues critical to the Arab and Muslim worlds, including geo-strategic issues in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as working groups focused on building partnerships on key issues such as the role of Muslim civil society, U.S.-Muslim engagement, the role of the media and culture, religious minorities, and development. The forum also includes a significant portion of the agenda for working group discussions on issues of relevance to U.S.-Muslim engagement. The one I attended brought together members of the Muslim non-profit community from Somalia, Egypt, the UAE, the United Kingdom, and the United States to generate recommendations and new thinking on how Muslim leaders and organizations can work more effectively in community development and civil society.

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While the events of the past weekend have shifted the world’s attention to Libya, there are clearly reverberations for North Korea, especially given that Muammar Qadhafi pursued, then gave up in 2003, a nuclear weapons capability as part of what seemed then like a step toward normalcy with the rest of the world. Qadhafi’s strategic decision to give up Libya’s nuclear program in return for rapprochement with the United States was held up to North Koreans as a model for pursuing diplomatic normalization with the United States.

Protests against Libya's leader, Muammar Qadhafi, spread to Boston. Photo by Flickr user WEBN-TV.

The North Koreans rejected the idea that there could be a “Libya model” for North Korea and pursued a nuclear test in 2006, but the door was still open to a diplomatic normalization for denuclearization deal based on the Sept. 19, 2005, Six-Party Talks Joint Statement.  Now that the “Libya model” has been shattered (by insurgency, Qadhafi’s military response to civil dissent, and retaliatory UN authorized airstrikes), one can’t help but wonder whether North Koreans might in 2011 take away aspects of the “Libya model” very different from those the United States would prefer.

Early in the unfolding of the Libyan unrest, at the beginning of March, The New York Times analyzed how much easier dealing with a non-nuclear Libya has been compared to the situation that would have existed had Libya not given up its nuclear weapons program. The article concluded with an observation from an anonymous South Korean that “When North Korea collapses – and one day it will, of course – we will face a problem that we’ve been spared in Libya. You have to bet that the leadership is going to threaten to use its weapons to stay in power. Even if they are bluffing, it’s going to change the entire strategy.” The North Korean policy takeaway from the “Libya model” is to hold on to their nukes at all costs. In the words of the North Korean foreign ministry spokesman, “having one’s own strength [is] the only way to keep the peace.”

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Many are wondering what lessons the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines, which ousted Ferdinand Marcos after 14 years of strongman rule (which followed two terms as elected president), might hold for the current “fourth wave” of democratization sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East. Sometimes, having lived in the Philippines through these years, with all of the twists and turns, I am reminded of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s response when asked to assess the French Revolution: “It is too early to say.”

Last month, President Noynoy Aquino led the 25th anniversary of the 1986 People Power at the iconic People Power Monument, above.

In early 2001, after People Power 2 had ousted President Joseph Estrada from office and Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became president, The Asia Foundation sponsored a visit by several Filipinos to cities in the United States to explain the perspectives of the new administration. At the last stop, a long-time immigrant from the Philippines said, “Every time there is a new administration in the Philippines a group like you comes through and tells us how things are going to be better. What makes this time any different?” One of the visitors responded, “It took us more than three years after Ninoy Aquino’s assassination [in August 1983] to get rid of Ferdinand Marcos. This time it only took us four months after the jueteng [a numbers game] exposé to get rid of ‘Erap’ Estrada. We are getting better at ousting bad leaders.”

Five years later, the 20th anniversary of People Power 1 was marred by a state of emergency declared by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who was struggling to stay in the presidency after accusations of fraud in the 2004 elections. She eventually served out her term, to be succeeded by Noynoy Aquino, son of the martyred Ninoy Aquino and former President Cory Aquino, who had led the forces ousting Marcos.

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