The recent election in Singapore has shown people want change, they may just not want it with SDP (though one can never be too sure, even in micromanaged Singapore). I agree with you about the rest of ASEAN, sans Vietnam. It’s hard to compare durians and longans, one oligarchic (I think you are correct) nation with a neo-HCM China-lite nation, that still has a way to go on freedom, but consider it took half as long for Vietnam to attain the same Per Capita GNP as Thailand, as Malaysia achieved about 2x Thailand’s PC-GNP. When I went to HCMC, I thought I was in Taipei and Hanoi is not the run down French mirage, you see in Indochine (of course, Catherine Deneuve is not in Hanoi at the moment, either). At the moment, the battles in Vietnam, not to be discounted mind you, are political and ideological and, of course, Vietnam wanting to be the China of ASEAN (forgetting ASEAN already has one, Singapore) but not wanting the Chinese domination that old Annam had to suffer for several hundred years. In Vietnam’s favour is relative homogeneity. Yes, there are ethnic Chinese, Khmers, Muslim Cham, and some “tribal” groups, but honestly, the VCP worries more about Vietnamese poets than ethnic Chinese merchants in HCMC (for the present). This is why the Penang Division of Intel and Dell are (or have) moving to HCMC. Even Dalat in Hue, a phenomenally beautiful city and Province, has industrial zones. In the case of Vietnam, though again with different demographies and history, I might not include in your list (but, yes to the rest). No real elections in Vietnam, no going against the VCP, persecution of demonstrative democrats, Catholics, poets, Cao Dai followers, and foreigners sometimes, all granted, but I don’t hear so many Vietnamese whining, which I think you will agree is a favourite pastime in Malaysia. I can’t say for sure, but in the case of economic growth and even economic equity, if nothing else, I think it is Vietnam that may soon leave Malaysia in the malaise of oligarchic and cultural factionalism; after all, Malaysia has one rather assertive religion, assiduously followed by most Malays, while the religion of Vietnam is money, lah. Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Cao Daism, Catholicism and even Islam for the Cham in Vietnam, is mostly just icing on the cake.
I think you are right Peter, that there can never be a real housecleaning (appears to be an oligarchy in Malaysia; but I am just wondering how far this path will continue before Malaysia reaches regional standards (e.g. Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam).
That strengthening monarchy post-1976 was key to Thailand’s political stability and prosperity in 1980s to 90s is a much more reasonable hypothesis, than blaming poverty on monarchy.
Jump out of the little Thai Studies bubble for a moment and compare Thailand’s economic trajectory during the cold-war with that of its neighbors Burma, Cambodia, Laos, etc.
A few anecdotes from a rich kid on a guilt trip is a laughable form of evidence to support a hypothesis.
One could supply numerous stories/ethnographies of street vendors leading comfortable middle class lives, saving for a small cinder block home on a plot of land in Chiang Rai from savings selling crepes to people exercising at Chiang Rai’s old airport/exercise park, my former next door neighbour, for instance. One could go on and on with examples.
It is truly sad that New Mandala is on a defamation for its own sake kick.
Looking at Malaysia now, with more tropical angst than a Conrad novel, it’s any wonder that Malaysia hadn’t been gone quite a while ago. Given the pervasiveness of corruption and “banal immorality”, I highly doubt there will ever be a real housecleaning. I remain to be proven wrong. I won’t pick a winner on Malaysia’s experiment in undermanaged multiculturalism; I just don’t think there is one.
Einstein visited Singapore, while I was a child in Malaya. Does that qualify him as Asian ? What about Singapore’s Jewish First Chief Minister, Sir David Marshall ? Is he Asian, Iraqi, British, Sephardi, Jewish, Singaporean ? All of them. Einstein was a man of the World, his ethnicity and culture were the atom and the universe. And I ? Well, about the same as Marshall….
Thank you for sharing your views Sayyed (#3 & #5).
It appears that corruption (or is it patronage?) is widespread ((i.e. systemic) in Malaysia.
I wonder how this will shape/influence the thinking of Muslims in Malaysia about Islam and about Muslims i.e. to paraphase Sean’s questions — how many Muslims will change their views that in Malaysia, it is Muslims in high office that are generally the most corrupt (10% clean, 90% corrupt) and that official push for Islam in Malaysia has not translated into good governance?
“They always seem to think that a Westerner would never truly understand “Asian-ness”
By definition does “Asian-ness” remote include Bach’s or Einstein for comparison?
Is it fair to decline to explain a cultural assumption that one either know nothing about or refuse to understand or do not care to know?
Nick
What you have describe in your article is a reflection of the principle of “Ah-nah-there” (in Burmese).
A common courtesy that EVERY Asian are culturally instill constantly directly or indirectly since birth.
Ah-Nah-There is closest to meaning “Imposition or Imposing” in English.
Any thing asked, said or done on one behalf can be construe as imposition.
If you think the Burmese make use of this cultural pearl to their disadvantage you will not begin to understand how every other westerner and the Chinese use that aspect of the culture to exploit the Burmese often knowingly or rarely unknowingly.
AMAZING
Thank you Nicholas for sharing this amazing insight; it is something quite unexpected, and it will surely inspire many Burma watchers. From now on, I will look at Burma in a different light. I may even move my project there; I have become weary of corrupt Malaysia, and it’s Apartheid system
Thanks for the clarification Sean, and you raise very good research questions.
Although I am sceptical of the hard numbers aspect.
The hard numbers says PM Najib should have been long gone.
The hard numbers says BN should have been long gone.
But both remain, and quite comfortably so?
So, maybe not so much “hard numbers” but rather “the correct numbers, at the correct levels, in the correct organisations/institutions, in the correct region”
“Monarchy” does not put people in jail; unjust laws administered by a plethora of corrupt individuals, from the man-in-the-street Stasi-like informer to the judge who pronounces the sentence do.
Make sense of that.
All it would take in Thailand is rule-of-law and respect for the constitution.
The idea that nothing short of a republic will remove these vicious injustices from the Thai scene is beyond absurd.
I went to various Catholic schools in Burma during the 50’s and the early 60’s, before Ne Win started “nationalising” everything. My teachers (Brothers and Sisters as we called them) were quite cosmopolitan, although in those days we never made a big fuss about “ethnicity”. I also remember that we had access to American magazines like Time and Life. I read a lot of books (in English) from libraries run by USIS and by the British Council and that’s how I was introduced to modern scientific ideas before I left Burma in the late 60’s (before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon!) to study in Europe. I was educated in a hard-core STEM subject and not in some soft humanitarian discipline such as political science. Only in my later years did I start reading magazines like the New Mandala. Anyway, I did get to know a lot of students from mainland China who started “flooding” campuses in the West recently and perhaps my experience with them is biased, but I did find out the way Chinese people think about the West and more tellingly about the “barbaric periphery” (places like Tibet, Burma, Laos, Cambodia. etc) The thing that strikes me is that even in the politically correct West, many Asians tell me (a brown guy) things they won’t say to “white” people. As you can see from the article, many Asians don’t like to answer truthfully to a “white” person, when they are asked a straightforward question (syllogistic (sic)) about something cultural or about some of their “customs”. They always seem to think that a Westerner would never truly understand “Asian-ness”. On the other hand, it would be unthinkable for a white person to tell a Chinese musician that he/she can’t appreciate Bach’s Fugues or to a Burmese student that he/she cannot understand Einstein’s General Relativity.
“I lived in Burma for over 20 years and I never used chopsticks.”
If you were brought up in Myanmar for 20 years, being in Yangon, thus at 19th Street Chinese Food eatery Vendors “the use only chopsticks is a must” especially in the 60’s.
Unless of course you do not eat pork then at kala restaurants no chopsticks are offered.
Together with the Pb laden well water that you drank for admittedly 20 year, we will let you faulty memory slide.
Hi, guys. Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately it doesn’t look as though my point got through. Greg notes in his review that the book examines (inconclusively) whether being a Muslim is either a necessary or sufficient condition to providing ethical leadership in Malaysia. It looks to me as though he accepts that this is an interesting – and indeed legitimate – question. The point I was trying to make was that it is neither. No doubt for at least some Muslims it goes without saying that you have to be a Muslim before you can provide ethical leadership, whatever country you’re in. And I suppose that for some political scientists it’s just a sad reality that in Malaysia specifically, in the most literal sense, you have to be a Muslim to become PM and hence to be in a position to provide ethical leadership. My point is somewhat different: the really interesting question is how widespread these views are. I think we can ignore issues of rationality or irrationality. One’s man’s irrationality, after all, is just another man’s rationality. In politics, it’s the hard numbers that really matter. So I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate to me – with evidence – the extent to which Malays themselves understand that there may be flaws in the Islamic or Malay traditions which could account for the prevailing corruption and the resultant damage to long-term Muslim, Malay and Malaysian interests. (And don’t tell me that Malay or Muslim – or, for that matter, non-Malay or non-Muslim – opinion on such matters is uniform.) Similarly, I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate the extent to which non-Malays – or indeed all Malaysians – understand what strategic options there may be for getting the country out it’s current political impasse. I don’t expect a firm number. But I wouldn’t mind a judgement based on a realistic analysis. Let’s get some rationality back into this debate! Perhaps we could reformulate the question to be examined along the following lines: “What are the prospects for political reform in the long-term interests of Malaysia and its people as indicated by attitudes to the question of whether being a Muslim is either a necessary or sufficient condition to providing ethical leadership in Malaysia?”
In 1960 Burma had the highest literacy rate in Bamar and English in SE Asia. Today, it is the fourth highest, after Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia. It remains much higher than China, where in rural areas, many Chinese don’t even speak standard Mandarin (Putonghua), let alone English which is still spoken by about 65-75 % of Myanmar’s citizens.
I lived in Burma for over 20 years and I never used chopsticks. The first time I used chopsticks was in a Chinese restaurant in Europe! I still have trouble with a number of students from mainland China here in the “West”, not only because of their weak English (TOEFL scores are a joke!) bit also because of the way they use logic (Aristotelian syllogisms).
Anyway, if Burmese students want to join the modern world and understand quantum physics or DNA sequencing, they better learn English and the scientific method (no stupid superstitious rubbish please!)
It’s always those infernal ‘external and internal destructive elements’ to blame…. like an old broken record. To destroy the status quo can only be a good thing, and not a moment too soon.
A nation enslaved by its army that is supposed to defend them and protect the realm but which instead cut them down in a hail of gunfire, beat up and disrobed its monks, for daring to protest peacefully.
A nation stunted and stopped from achieving its full genetic physical and intellectual potential by the military yoke for the last half century.
A nation misruled and its economy mismanaged by a state monopoly military bureaucratic capitalism masquerading as socialism, then exploited and extracted to the hilt under an undisguised unfettered crony capitalist system reducing it to a virtual vassal state of China.
A nation now being subjected to disaster capitalism and ceasefire capitalism.
The regime is hearing its death knell and shaking in its boots. The end is nigh!
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Cara Menghasilkan Uang Dengan Bermain Dominoqq
Greg,
The recent election in Singapore has shown people want change, they may just not want it with SDP (though one can never be too sure, even in micromanaged Singapore). I agree with you about the rest of ASEAN, sans Vietnam. It’s hard to compare durians and longans, one oligarchic (I think you are correct) nation with a neo-HCM China-lite nation, that still has a way to go on freedom, but consider it took half as long for Vietnam to attain the same Per Capita GNP as Thailand, as Malaysia achieved about 2x Thailand’s PC-GNP. When I went to HCMC, I thought I was in Taipei and Hanoi is not the run down French mirage, you see in Indochine (of course, Catherine Deneuve is not in Hanoi at the moment, either). At the moment, the battles in Vietnam, not to be discounted mind you, are political and ideological and, of course, Vietnam wanting to be the China of ASEAN (forgetting ASEAN already has one, Singapore) but not wanting the Chinese domination that old Annam had to suffer for several hundred years. In Vietnam’s favour is relative homogeneity. Yes, there are ethnic Chinese, Khmers, Muslim Cham, and some “tribal” groups, but honestly, the VCP worries more about Vietnamese poets than ethnic Chinese merchants in HCMC (for the present). This is why the Penang Division of Intel and Dell are (or have) moving to HCMC. Even Dalat in Hue, a phenomenally beautiful city and Province, has industrial zones. In the case of Vietnam, though again with different demographies and history, I might not include in your list (but, yes to the rest). No real elections in Vietnam, no going against the VCP, persecution of demonstrative democrats, Catholics, poets, Cao Dai followers, and foreigners sometimes, all granted, but I don’t hear so many Vietnamese whining, which I think you will agree is a favourite pastime in Malaysia. I can’t say for sure, but in the case of economic growth and even economic equity, if nothing else, I think it is Vietnam that may soon leave Malaysia in the malaise of oligarchic and cultural factionalism; after all, Malaysia has one rather assertive religion, assiduously followed by most Malays, while the religion of Vietnam is money, lah. Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Cao Daism, Catholicism and even Islam for the Cham in Vietnam, is mostly just icing on the cake.
Cara Menghasilkan Uang Dengan Bermain Dominoqq
I think you are right Peter, that there can never be a real housecleaning (appears to be an oligarchy in Malaysia; but I am just wondering how far this path will continue before Malaysia reaches regional standards (e.g. Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam).
Why I speak out against the Thai Monarchy
That strengthening monarchy post-1976 was key to Thailand’s political stability and prosperity in 1980s to 90s is a much more reasonable hypothesis, than blaming poverty on monarchy.
Jump out of the little Thai Studies bubble for a moment and compare Thailand’s economic trajectory during the cold-war with that of its neighbors Burma, Cambodia, Laos, etc.
A few anecdotes from a rich kid on a guilt trip is a laughable form of evidence to support a hypothesis.
One could supply numerous stories/ethnographies of street vendors leading comfortable middle class lives, saving for a small cinder block home on a plot of land in Chiang Rai from savings selling crepes to people exercising at Chiang Rai’s old airport/exercise park, my former next door neighbour, for instance. One could go on and on with examples.
It is truly sad that New Mandala is on a defamation for its own sake kick.
Cara Menghasilkan Uang Dengan Bermain Dominoqq
Greg,
Looking at Malaysia now, with more tropical angst than a Conrad novel, it’s any wonder that Malaysia hadn’t been gone quite a while ago. Given the pervasiveness of corruption and “banal immorality”, I highly doubt there will ever be a real housecleaning. I remain to be proven wrong. I won’t pick a winner on Malaysia’s experiment in undermanaged multiculturalism; I just don’t think there is one.
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
Einstein visited Singapore, while I was a child in Malaya. Does that qualify him as Asian ? What about Singapore’s Jewish First Chief Minister, Sir David Marshall ? Is he Asian, Iraqi, British, Sephardi, Jewish, Singaporean ? All of them. Einstein was a man of the World, his ethnicity and culture were the atom and the universe. And I ? Well, about the same as Marshall….
Demokrasi Indonesia Dalam Bahaya
Vote for Prabowo, and welcome to the second North Korea
Cara Menghasilkan Uang Dengan Bermain Dominoqq
Thank you for sharing your views Sayyed (#3 & #5).
It appears that corruption (or is it patronage?) is widespread ((i.e. systemic) in Malaysia.
I wonder how this will shape/influence the thinking of Muslims in Malaysia about Islam and about Muslims i.e. to paraphase Sean’s questions — how many Muslims will change their views that in Malaysia, it is Muslims in high office that are generally the most corrupt (10% clean, 90% corrupt) and that official push for Islam in Malaysia has not translated into good governance?
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
“They always seem to think that a Westerner would never truly understand “Asian-ness”
By definition does “Asian-ness” remote include Bach’s or Einstein for comparison?
Is it fair to decline to explain a cultural assumption that one either know nothing about or refuse to understand or do not care to know?
Nick
What you have describe in your article is a reflection of the principle of “Ah-nah-there” (in Burmese).
A common courtesy that EVERY Asian are culturally instill constantly directly or indirectly since birth.
Ah-Nah-There is closest to meaning “Imposition or Imposing” in English.
Any thing asked, said or done on one behalf can be construe as imposition.
If you think the Burmese make use of this cultural pearl to their disadvantage you will not begin to understand how every other westerner and the Chinese use that aspect of the culture to exploit the Burmese often knowingly or rarely unknowingly.
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
AMAZING
Thank you Nicholas for sharing this amazing insight; it is something quite unexpected, and it will surely inspire many Burma watchers. From now on, I will look at Burma in a different light. I may even move my project there; I have become weary of corrupt Malaysia, and it’s Apartheid system
A tribute to Nicholas Tapp
A beautiful remembrance. Many thanks.
Cara Menghasilkan Uang Dengan Bermain Dominoqq
Thanks for the clarification Sean, and you raise very good research questions.
Although I am sceptical of the hard numbers aspect.
The hard numbers says PM Najib should have been long gone.
The hard numbers says BN should have been long gone.
But both remain, and quite comfortably so?
So, maybe not so much “hard numbers” but rather “the correct numbers, at the correct levels, in the correct organisations/institutions, in the correct region”
Happy to hear your take on this.
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
This is an “argumentum ad hominem”
Why I speak out against the Thai Monarchy
Interested in “making sense”, now, are we?
“Monarchy” does not put people in jail; unjust laws administered by a plethora of corrupt individuals, from the man-in-the-street Stasi-like informer to the judge who pronounces the sentence do.
Make sense of that.
All it would take in Thailand is rule-of-law and respect for the constitution.
The idea that nothing short of a republic will remove these vicious injustices from the Thai scene is beyond absurd.
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
I went to various Catholic schools in Burma during the 50’s and the early 60’s, before Ne Win started “nationalising” everything. My teachers (Brothers and Sisters as we called them) were quite cosmopolitan, although in those days we never made a big fuss about “ethnicity”. I also remember that we had access to American magazines like Time and Life. I read a lot of books (in English) from libraries run by USIS and by the British Council and that’s how I was introduced to modern scientific ideas before I left Burma in the late 60’s (before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon!) to study in Europe. I was educated in a hard-core STEM subject and not in some soft humanitarian discipline such as political science. Only in my later years did I start reading magazines like the New Mandala. Anyway, I did get to know a lot of students from mainland China who started “flooding” campuses in the West recently and perhaps my experience with them is biased, but I did find out the way Chinese people think about the West and more tellingly about the “barbaric periphery” (places like Tibet, Burma, Laos, Cambodia. etc) The thing that strikes me is that even in the politically correct West, many Asians tell me (a brown guy) things they won’t say to “white” people. As you can see from the article, many Asians don’t like to answer truthfully to a “white” person, when they are asked a straightforward question (syllogistic (sic)) about something cultural or about some of their “customs”. They always seem to think that a Westerner would never truly understand “Asian-ness”. On the other hand, it would be unthinkable for a white person to tell a Chinese musician that he/she can’t appreciate Bach’s Fugues or to a Burmese student that he/she cannot understand Einstein’s General Relativity.
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
“I lived in Burma for over 20 years and I never used chopsticks.”
If you were brought up in Myanmar for 20 years, being in Yangon, thus at 19th Street Chinese Food eatery Vendors “the use only chopsticks is a must” especially in the 60’s.
Unless of course you do not eat pork then at kala restaurants no chopsticks are offered.
Together with the Pb laden well water that you drank for admittedly 20 year, we will let you faulty memory slide.
.
Cara Menghasilkan Uang Dengan Bermain Dominoqq
Hi, guys. Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately it doesn’t look as though my point got through. Greg notes in his review that the book examines (inconclusively) whether being a Muslim is either a necessary or sufficient condition to providing ethical leadership in Malaysia. It looks to me as though he accepts that this is an interesting – and indeed legitimate – question. The point I was trying to make was that it is neither. No doubt for at least some Muslims it goes without saying that you have to be a Muslim before you can provide ethical leadership, whatever country you’re in. And I suppose that for some political scientists it’s just a sad reality that in Malaysia specifically, in the most literal sense, you have to be a Muslim to become PM and hence to be in a position to provide ethical leadership. My point is somewhat different: the really interesting question is how widespread these views are. I think we can ignore issues of rationality or irrationality. One’s man’s irrationality, after all, is just another man’s rationality. In politics, it’s the hard numbers that really matter. So I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate to me – with evidence – the extent to which Malays themselves understand that there may be flaws in the Islamic or Malay traditions which could account for the prevailing corruption and the resultant damage to long-term Muslim, Malay and Malaysian interests. (And don’t tell me that Malay or Muslim – or, for that matter, non-Malay or non-Muslim – opinion on such matters is uniform.) Similarly, I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate the extent to which non-Malays – or indeed all Malaysians – understand what strategic options there may be for getting the country out it’s current political impasse. I don’t expect a firm number. But I wouldn’t mind a judgement based on a realistic analysis. Let’s get some rationality back into this debate! Perhaps we could reformulate the question to be examined along the following lines: “What are the prospects for political reform in the long-term interests of Malaysia and its people as indicated by attitudes to the question of whether being a Muslim is either a necessary or sufficient condition to providing ethical leadership in Malaysia?”
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
Marayu,
In 1960 Burma had the highest literacy rate in Bamar and English in SE Asia. Today, it is the fourth highest, after Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia. It remains much higher than China, where in rural areas, many Chinese don’t even speak standard Mandarin (Putonghua), let alone English which is still spoken by about 65-75 % of Myanmar’s citizens.
Who are Myanmar’s friends?
I lived in Burma for over 20 years and I never used chopsticks. The first time I used chopsticks was in a Chinese restaurant in Europe! I still have trouble with a number of students from mainland China here in the “West”, not only because of their weak English (TOEFL scores are a joke!) bit also because of the way they use logic (Aristotelian syllogisms).
Anyway, if Burmese students want to join the modern world and understand quantum physics or DNA sequencing, they better learn English and the scientific method (no stupid superstitious rubbish please!)
Making Myanmar’s overseas vote count
It’s always those infernal ‘external and internal destructive elements’ to blame…. like an old broken record. To destroy the status quo can only be a good thing, and not a moment too soon.
A nation enslaved by its army that is supposed to defend them and protect the realm but which instead cut them down in a hail of gunfire, beat up and disrobed its monks, for daring to protest peacefully.
A nation stunted and stopped from achieving its full genetic physical and intellectual potential by the military yoke for the last half century.
A nation misruled and its economy mismanaged by a state monopoly military bureaucratic capitalism masquerading as socialism, then exploited and extracted to the hilt under an undisguised unfettered crony capitalist system reducing it to a virtual vassal state of China.
A nation now being subjected to disaster capitalism and ceasefire capitalism.
The regime is hearing its death knell and shaking in its boots. The end is nigh!
Why I speak out against the Thai Monarchy
Who’s the last person who spent 20 years in jail for insulting the King of Canada?
Doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense as a comparison.