Beyond Universalism and Relativism: The Evolving Debates about "Values in Asia"

Abstract

... Perhaps the most serious threat to the movement to date came when increasingly assertive Asian governments, buoyed by years of economic growth, issued the 1993 Bangkok Declaration challenging the universalism of human rights and criticizing the international human rights movement for being Western-biased. ... Assuming Confucianism is compatible with democracy or that we are simply going to stipulate that democracy is unavoidable and turn our attention to developing a form of Confucian democracy, what will that be? How does it differ from liberal democracy? What are its distinctive institutions, practices and values? Will it have a divided legislature with one chamber controlled by elites? If so, what exactly will the division of power be? On what issues will the elites have ultimate authority? Similarly, what are the defining characteristics of a Confucian rule of law? Will the purposes of the law and legal system be to limit or strengthen the state, to protect individual rights or, more likely, some balance between the two, and if so, what balance? Will there be a role for rule of virtue (de zhi) as well as rule of law-as advocated by that born-again New Confucian Jiang Zemin- and how will the two relate and be reconciled? Will there be any distinctive institutions-such as the censorate ...