Session 1
What is Asia - How Should we Understand it？
Chairperson: Phisit PAKKASEM (Kingdom of Thailand)
Speaker: Takashi SHIRAISHI (Japan)
Commentator: Goenawan MOHAMAD (Republic of Indonesia)
Commentator: LEE, Jong won (Republic of Korea)
● Chairperson: Phisit PAKKASEM
Chairman, Thai Investment and securities Public Co., Ltd.(TISCO) Group
I think the conference intentionally picked three countries, Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. Now we are major players in the new Asian drama. the Asian meltdown. We have a distinguished professor, Dr. Shiraishi from Japan to explain Asia in three time frames, 50 years, l50 years and 500 years before, in order to understand the present. And I hope you will predict the future of Asia.
● Speaker: Takashi SHIRAISHI
Professor, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
The theme I was given for this speech is "What is Asia?" And I am supposed to talk about my opinion as to how we should understand Asia, I would like to start with a kind of inside story when I was asked to make this speech by the organization committee. The situation of Asian region was quite different at that time. I mean, the current economic crisis had not yet surfaced. At present, this crisis has grown into a social crisis, and eventually to the political crisis in Indonesia. Therefore, I wrote the abstract of this speech without thinking very hard about the seriousness of current crisis. But this crisis turned out to be such a very important turning point that the future historians might start the description of the 21st century with it. At least, I have come to think that way. This crisis is currently underway, but I have a feeling that with this crisis, one era will come to an end and the next era will begin. I have no idea as to what kind of era will begin. But at least I can say what the next era that will be made depends on what we learn from the crisis we are facing and how we act on such lessons. I think that is the fundamental meaning of this crisis.
I would like to mention some simple facts that make the current crisis so serious. The most important point is that anything needs excessive amounts of money. Here, I would like to mention two such examples. The amount of financial aid from Japan to the Southeast Asian countries until this crisis started was about one trillion yen for Indonesia. This accounts for the largest amount as financial aid to Southeast Asian countries. For other countries, some hundreds of billion yen in aid have been given for the last 15 years.
However, Japanese government promised to give 10 billion dollars each, that is about 1.3 trillion yen, in financial aid to Thailand and Indonesia. That means the amount of financial aid to each of the Southeast Asian countries rose from hundreds of billions to trillions, one figure higher.
Furthermore, these trillions might be gone within a year.
The first point I should like to make is that this is a problem of the age we live in. This is not a problem that Japan alone has. I think Dr. Pakkasem here knows well the fact that central bank of Thailand is said to have lost 23 billion yen in a day in last June. The bank lost almost 3 trillion yen converted at the exchange rate at that time to maintain the baht. We have entered an astounding age. The amount of the financial aid became trillions as I mentioned above. From the Japanese government alone, the financial aid for Thailand and Indonesia amounts to 2.5 to 3 trillion. However, this amount is larger than the reduction of income tax government of Japan is trying to do.
There is such a serious crisis before our eyes. What kind of lesson can we learn from it? I think we can find two lessons when we read articles of magazines and newspapers published in English. One such lesson is, deregulation and transparency of markets should be promoted since global standards and transparency mean a lot in this age of globalization. Moreover, we can find a perspective especially in newspapers and magazines published in English that the world will be homogeneous and eventually the economic system of Anglo-Saxon type capitalism will overwhelm the world. The other is related to the question "What is a good government?" Some people insist that the age of authoritarian or development oriented social structure has
