Danger, Will Robinson! Heavy topic ahead!
No resolutions in this blog … I’m just throwing it out there.
I was about to coin a particular term — and felt pretty proud of myself for thinking of it — when I searched and found out that it’s used quite widely already, albeit in a completely different context. Allow me to explain.
A few months ago, I read Mitt Romney’s concession speech. And part of it went as follows:
We face economic competition unlike anything we have ever known before. China and Asia are emerging from centuries of poverty. Their people are plentiful, innovative, and ambitious. If we do not change course, Asia or China will pass us by as the economic superpower…
Okay, let’s forgive the “centuries of poverty” crack and the fact that China is, according to Mitt, not part of Asia, and move on to the rest of the quote. I mean, if Mitt Romney mentioned it, it must have occurred to a couple of other people as well, right?
Am I happy that Asia is emerging as a long-term super-bloc? Yes, I am. Obviously, because I’m Asian myself, it’s nice to see; I don’t make any bones about that. I also think it’ll be great to have a bit of a multi-geographic mash-up going on in the world … think of all the new foods we can eat. Haddock briyani in Selfoss? Bring it on! (Not sure about hakarl in Shanghai … though you never know!) Of course, I doubt all this will occur fully in my lifetime, but I consider it inevitable.
In tandem with the rise in these previously secondary countries is something in the apparently waning primary countries that not many people seem to be commenting about, and that’s the shrinking of the middle class. I notice this particularly in the English-speaking Western countries because, obviously, that’s the news I read. Prices are going up, affordability is going down, and the middle class is getting squeezed by a debt trap they didn’t see coming, exacerbated by the corporate tsunami of offshoring, and governments not giving a fig. These factors combine to drive down salaries — a desperate, mortgage-laden supply of workers outstripping demand in Western countries, coupled with lowball bids from highly-skilled workers in emerging, offshore markets. So that’s the first point of consideration.
If this was a level playing field, then, we would see that — indeed — Mitt baby is right, and the outcome from all this knowledge movement would be the Dawn of the High-Tech Asian Bloc Civilisations (cue scary music) and yellow and brown skins sweeping the world in an orgy of economic dominance. And, I already see that kind of stuff in the local bookshops: row upon row of glossy books with fantastic architectural edifices and glittering cranes on the covers, telling me that Asia, or one of its components, is going to be the next leader in Innovation/Creativity/Supersonic Pizza Delivery.
Not so fast, Messrs. Lee, Hitaro and Kumar. We’re forgetting about one thing — cultural subservience. Now, that term is normally used to describe the alleged kowtowing of Western civilisation to the bearded Muslim hordes (a malignant offshoot of Huntington Madness (copyright 2007, KS Augustin)), but I’d like to strip all such connotations from it and take it back to basics. In this blog, I define “cultural subservience” as merely the subservience of one type of culture (ethnic or otherwise) to another. No sub-texts. Okay?
So, we have the gutting of the middle-class in the West, the rise of the knowledge nation in the East (both of which should naturally lead to Asia’s economic dominance) … and Kaz’s definition of cultural subservience. How does it all fit? All you need to complete the line between all these points is one more tidbit: when looking for their first job in south-east Asia, Asian students with degrees from Western countries get about 20% more than Asian students with degrees from Asian countries. Why that should be, when the general educational standard of students in Asia is higher than that of their peers in Western English-speaking countries, is beyond me. (No, I’m not being elitist, just go check the various UN stats; or the TIMSS (for maths & science) tables here and here, for example.) This unamibiguous measure of ability, however, is tempered by cultural subservience.
Cultural subservience is so visceral, that we have to fight hard and consciously (and sometimes still lose) against it. Cultural subservience tells me that a female astronaut is not as good as a male astronaut, for example (and especially if you’re Charlotte Allen! * snerk *), and that an Asian engineer is not as good as a Caucasian. You could argue that what I’m describing is actually cultural bias, but I’m using the term “subservience” (which includes bias) deliberately for a reason that will become obvious soon.
All regional high-tech crowing to one side, what I see in south-east Asia (‘cos that’s where I am) is another manifestation of cultural subservience. Chen must be the superior job candidate (and get a better starting salary) because (a) well, he’s male, duh! (you won’t get any argument from me that Asia is incredibly, diabolically, sexist), and (b) he studied in Dublin, Ireland, say.
Wang, on the other hand, only graduated from a Singapore university and is a woman, thus she must not be as smart. QED She will get 20% less than Chen because of the origin of her degree, and get penalised another 20-30% on top of that because she’s female.
Even worse, British-born Andrew from London will then saunter along on a corporate relocation package and trump both smirking Chen from Ang Mo Kio (via Dublin University) and unfortunate Wang from Bukit Batok (via National University of Singapore) in salary, just because he’s an orang putih (white man) with some corporate backing.
SO IF WE HAVE that cultural subservience of Asians to Westerners (and everybody likes to be coy and pretend it doesn’t exist, but it does),
PLUS the cultural subservience of the darker-skinned Asians to the lighter-skinned Asians (even within the same ethnic group),
PLUS the cultural subservience of women to men,
then — despite the money and skills flowing into the continent — how can Asia truly break free and establish itself as an economic (and, by corollary, cultural) hegemon in its own right? Well, it can’t, can it? Not while it’s openly boastful and yet secretly shamed by its own pigmented and particularly gendered brain power. I have no easy answers for this. I wonder if Asia will ever manage to rationalise itself out of this philosophical, reality-based cul-de-sac. And I’m prepared for the fact that the answer may not even come in my lifetime. But it’s something that must happen if Asia is to succeed.
ADDITIONAL: Even in Western countries, women earn approximately 75% of a man’s salary for equivalent work across the board. There are stats around to analyse if you go searching. In Asian countries, this is compounded by the Western education fallacy. Thus, a female Asian graduate from a local university will probably earn only 50% of a male Asian graduate from a Western university for the exact same position.
Let me speak plainly. Asians are, as a group, currently and overwhelmingly too short-sighted, bigoted and chauvinistic (yep, I’m calling you out, Messrs. Lee, Hitaro and Kumar) to see beyond these significant points of discrimination. And as long as we remain wilfully blind, we deserve to fail.
