논문제목: Harmony, the Supremacy of Human Agency and East Asia’s Mega-Discourses for Governance

저자: 손기영, HK연구교수

출판정보: Chinese Journal of International Politics, 제5권 제4호. 2012년 11월

Not only China, but many East Asian countries have risen as the centre of global industrial production. A closer look at the region yields another side of the East Asian miracle: a group of discourses propagated by the political elite through East Asia’s transnational space. This research focuses on three discourses: ‘Asian Values’ articulated by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia; ‘a harmonious society’ by Chinese President Hu Jintao; and ‘fraternity’ by Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio. This research aims to find philosophical and discursive commonalities amongst these three elite discourses against the backdrop of globalization and regionalism in East Asia. This research posits the three not just as counter discourses to the Western discourses of liberal democracy and neo-liberal economics, but also as a set of initiatives to proactively harmonize both East Asian and Western values and institutions, tantamount to the formation of new hegemonic discourses of a hybrid nature. These discourses will be referred to as harmonist discourses or harmonism as an expression of the ethos, identities and norms of the East Asian political elite in connection with national, regional and global governance at a specific historical juncture the world is passing through, that is, a relative decline of Western hegemony and the re-emergence of East Asia. The harmonist discourses have sought to challenge and redefine the international order and its operating rules, set largely by Western powers. Furthermore, such discourses are the articulation of new identities and norms, effectively turning these ‘developmental states’ in East Asia into a group of harmonist states featuring an eclectic mix of both Western and East Asian governing ideologies.