Asia Pacific Regionalism as a Response to Globalisation

In doing so the essayist recognises the capabilities of the region as an entity capable by itself.
             The "Asia-Pacific" is a site of cultural production, an invention by the West to deflect its uncertainty in a globalised world. It is above all a site that calls forth another round of Orientalism that serves to band together the historical supremacy of the West.
             The West still holds the cards in international politics, as the major source of capital and technology. Since the East cannot supplant the West from this leadership position, the strategy of Asian states like Malaysia and Singapore is to contest the West on cultural grounds.
             The notion of Asian values has increasingly been deployed by Lee Kuan Yew and the Singaporean elite to legitimise and maintain the power of the PAP state and generate unity among a multiethnic population. Berger illustrates this by noting how, "Lee Kuan Yew has emphasized on more than one occasion that the key to Singapore's success lies in the way its people "used the family to push economic growth." At the same time his explanation for Singapore's continuing success is very quickly extrapolated to East Asia as a whole and he emphasizes, "Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of his family." (1997, p. 271). Through the recognition of Asian values as sacred, Lee Kuan Yew has chosen a path of economic development that follows the Asian model rather than that of a global one. Thus the option of an Asia-Pacific regional outlook is unique to the East as it is one of communitarian gain a model followed closely by the most economically successful nations in Asia.
             The routes to the modern world taken by the countries of the region of Pacific Asia have been diverse in their detail but have it in common that the driving force has been the expansion of the industrial-capitalist system. The overall historical development of the countries of Pacific Asia encompasses a series of phases towards a present-day pattern of loose regional integration.