Asian values have been under debate for more than two decades ever since the argument first started in Singapore by the mid 1970s. It once again became a hot issue in the late 1980s when Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew articulated the idea of Asian values to the Western media. And the debate remains heated and widespread. Among its recent indicators is the "Workshop on Human Rights and Asian Values' held by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies on 15-16 May, 1997 in Denmark.
"The Asian values debate is widely believed to be a voice of a rising reassertion of traditional values amid dynamic economic growth in some East and Southeast Asian countries," says Xu Xiaoge in Media Asia. It is an expression of concerns of some Asian leaders over the invasion and domination of Western cultures and values due to the overwhelming presence of the Western media in the region. It is a call to safeguard national identity and cultural distinctiveness in a battle against the invasion and monopoly of Western cultures and values."
Xu says a quick look at the picture of the international news communication shows that a few news media giants dominate the news flow in the region. "Five news agencies - Agence France Presse, and the Russian International Telegraph Agency (formerly TASS) - control about 96 percent of the world's news flows." The Western news agencies, having a virtual monopoly on global news flow, fail to present a realistic picture of the realities of the developing nations. The Western news media coverage focuses on negative aspects of the Third World such as poverty, illiteracy, riots, and crimes.
"The Western news media domination is only part of their cultural domination over the whole world. The result is that this world is suffering from not only news flow imbalance but also cultural domination and value imposition. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, rock & roll, jeans, and Nike are seen almost everywhere around the world."
The West has exported not only its goods but also its ideas. They impose their ideas of democracy, human rights, press freedom, etc. on peoples and governments in other countries, especially in Asia. The Western cultural domination and value imposition exert "a homogenizing influence over ideas, culture and commerce" on threatening cultural identity and diversity of cultures.
"In this world with a diversity of cultures, no culture may necessarily be better or worse than another. By the same token, no culture may necessarily be superior or inferior to another. Cultures are just different from one another. It is the cultural differences that make this world move, grow and enrich itself.
