As Asian countries become richer, will they inevitably become more like the west? Put another way, in order to become prosperous and “modern” must they take on the characteristics that have made western countries successful?
That question often prompts a fairly shallow discussion of present-day China, which has combined fast economic growth with a one-party system and confounded predictions that, as it grew wealthier, it would inevitably become more democratic. Two academics who have held this question up to a more rigorous light are Chalmers Johnson, an influential Asian scholar who died last weekend, and Patrick Smith, author of a recent book on Asia called Somebody Else’s Century.
In very different ways both challenge the idea that, to be modern, a country must assimilate western thinking, particularly that of its most successful example, the US. Johnson’s most famous contribution to this debate was his classic account of Japan’s remarkable economic takeoff, Miti and the Japanese Miracle. In that study of the then Ministry of International Trade and Industry, he advanced a theory of the “developmental state”.