Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

18 MICHAEL PINCHES
more attention to human relations than to “things”… In the West “things” are more
important than human relations’ (Shuishen Liu quoted in Tai 1989c:19). That the
intellectuals who proffer this sort of divide are to be found both in Asia and the
West testifies not only to the growing cultural confidence in many parts of Asia,
but also to what some see as the growing cultural malaise in the West (Chua 1995:
150). 26
In some contexts, Confucianism has come to stand for Asia vis-à-vis the West
and, in this sense, merges with the larger, looser concept of ‘Asian Values’, which
likewise declares the cultural pre-eminence of family and community over
individualism. However, the ideology of Confucianism has also focused more
specifically on the reconstitution and elevation of Chinese identity across East and
Southeast Asia, both in reference to the majority populations in Singapore, Taiwan
and Hong Kong, and the minority ethnic Chinese in the industrialising societies of
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. In this sense, it is not only the
West that constitutes the Other of Confucianism, but also the non-Chinese ethnic
groups or nations of Asia, which to varying degrees have articulated their own
identities through discriminatory treatment and characterisations of the Chinese,
centred both on the latter’s prominent roles in commerce, and on their purported
lack of cultural refinement (Gosling 1983; Heryanto, Pinches). The reconstitution
of the ethnicity of the ‘overseas’ Chinese around the newly elevated status of
Confucianism and China challenges these negative stereotypes.
In their loosest and most general form, Confucianist representations construct
the new rich of Asia as simply the peoples and nations of East Asia; in their
narrower sense, they construct them as the ‘overseas’ Chinese, either as ethnic
majorities or minorities in particular nation states. In both senses there is indeed a
broad empirical correspondence: a high proportion of Asia’s newly wealthy have
Confucian or Chinese ancestries, and a high proportion of those who are not from
such backgrounds do not possess new wealth. Thus, the efficacy of this cultural
construction variously rests on its apparent explanatory value, its broad empirical
correspondence with those who have new wealth, and its double-edged moral
identity claims vis-à-vis the West, in a region long dominated by European and
American interests, and vis-à-vis non-Chinese Asians, who have often been hostile
to the Chinese. However, the Confucianist ideology that has been used to
characterise Asia’s new rich is distinctively modern. A fundamental deviation from
classic Confucianism, which appears not to have been problematised in the
literature, involves the elevation of the successful capitalist to the top of the status
hierarchy, in some cases alongside the high-state official, as the hero of
industrialisation and economic prosperity. As noted earlier, in classic Confucianism,
the capitalist’s former counterparts–the merchant and artisan–were virtual
outcasts. And contrary to the ideal gender relations of classic Confucianism,
growing numbers of the region’s celebrated ethnic Chinese capitalists are women
(Licuanan 1992). 27
Confucianist and Chinese ethnic representations of Asia’s new rich have mainly
been the work of politicians, academics and journalists, both within the region and