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Differences Between Asian and American Values
（亚美价值观的差别）

Many countries became concerned with the US- led Nato’s recent declaration that human rights are more important than national sovereignty. What are the differences between Eastern and Western societies in human rights and other values? On June 28, Prof Tommy Koh spoke on “Differences in Asian and American values”. The following is the second part of his paper.
On personal values, Asians emphasised the importance of respect for learning, honesty and self- discipline, whereas Americans emphasized achieving success in life, personal achievement and helping others.
On societal values, there were three differences. First, 71% of the Asians compared to 11% of the Americans emphasised the importance of orderly society.
Second, 82% of the Americans compared to 32% of the Asians emphasised the importance of personal freedom.
Third, 78% of the Americans compared to 29% of the Asians emphasised the importance of individual rights.
Hitchcock’s survey findings confirm my impression that there are significant differences between the personal and societal values of Asians and Americans.
To recapitulate, Asians emphasise the importance of orderly society whereas Americans emphasise the importance of personal freedom and individual rights.
Asians emphasise the importance of respect for learning and self- discipline whereas Americans emphasise the importance of success, personal achievement and helping others.
Given the above differences, it is therefore not surprising that East Asia and the West do not always hold identical views on human rights.
In November 1998, the Asia- Europe Foundation co- organized a colloquium on Human Rights and Human Responsibilities, with the German newspaper, Die Zeit, in Hamburg. The colloquium agreed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has helped to make the world a more humane place. However, there were two disagreements among some Asian and European participants at the colloquium.
The first disagreement was over whether, given the diversity of the world in which we live, we could agree that “different places should be allowed to progress at different paces” towards the achievement of the universal standards.
The second disagreement was on whether, in judging the human rights situation of a country, one should take into account its history and context.
Let us take China as an example. Should we judge China by the standards of, for example, contemporary Sweden, or should China be judged in the context of the dramatic progress it has made since the beginning of the Deng era?
A former US Ambassador to China, J Stapleton- Roy, had written that no government in human history has done so much for so many people in such a short time as the government of China.
At the Hamburg colloquium, we agreed that our record of achievements in the field of human rights, over the past 50 years, contained at least three flaws. First, we acknowledged that we are all guilty of double standards. We tend to criticize states with which we have little or no national interests and which are not in a position to retaliate against us.
There is an inescapable tension faced by all governments in reconciling their commitment to principles and the interests of the state.
Second, the development of international human rights law, during the past 50 years, has been driven by a dominant West. The views, concerns and interests of the non- Western world are often ignored or inadequately considered.
A case in point is the current campaign by Europe to impose its opposition to capital punishment on the rest of the world as a new universal norm.
Is it right for Europe to do so when the facts are that there are 118 countries which retain capital punishment in their laws as against 67 which have legally abolished the death penalty?
Third, because of its ignorance of the conditions in some developing countries, the good intentions of the West sometimes do more harm than good. Let me give you an example.
Last October, I co- chaired a colloquium on labour relations at the Hague, in the Netherlands. A representative of a European non-government organization told us that it had succeeded in closing down a factory in Bangladesh which employed child labour. Latter, it found to its horror that because of the poverty of the families, some of the girls had been forced into prostitution.
The moral of the story is that in order to wipe out child labour we need a positive agenda of poverty alleviation as well as an agenda of targeting the evil people who exploit children.
I want to conclude on a positive note. Because of globalization, information technology and human mobility, we are truly the citizens of one world. We must therefore evolve a global consensus on what is good and evil and what is right and wrong. Asian and Europeans can make important contributions towards the evolution of such a consensus.
In our dialogue, we should be diligent in seeking understanding and be slow to judge. We should avoid confrontation as much as possible. We should treat each other with mutual respect. With such an attitude, I am confident that we will succeed in increasing our points of convergence and reducing our points of divergence. And, when we disagree, we should agree to disagree agreeably.

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