Chapter 2 - Understanding the Politics of Knowledge: The Asian Perspective

Summary

Knowledge is Power is today a commonplace in an increasingly globalised world in which there is a much greater and renewed emphasis on the creation of an information economy, a knowledge-based economy or a knowledge society. Echoing this sentiment in his address at the LSE Asia Forum 2008, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (thereafter, Premier Lee) underscored the importance of creating favourable conditions for knowledge and innovation to flourish so that Asian countries can sustain their economic growth and improve their people's lives. It is an active engagement and interaction with knowledge and technology that has the whole Asian continent on the move today with China and India having economically taken off in such dramatic fashion. Similarly, more and more writers such as Kishore Mahbubani have also begun to argue that there is an irresistible shift of global power to the East from the standpoint that Asians have finally understood, absorbed and implemented Western best practices in many areas while also being innovative in their own way by creating new patterns of cooperation not seen in the West. Asians are thus ready to move from being bystanders in world history to becoming co-drivers in foreign policy matters including the quest for knowledge and technology.

Premier Lee also argued that knowledge creation is not a new phenomenon in Asia. He illustrated with examples that both the ancient Indian and ancient Chinese civilisations made significant contributions to the frontiers of knowledge — new knowledge was discovered and developed centuries before they became known to the West. Even the early Southeast Asian civilisations of Cambodia (Angkorian period) and Java (Srivijayan period) were the results of knowledge and a complex Hindu culture. Lest we forget that the Great Islamic Civilisation was also the result of the quest and acquisition of all kinds of knowledge besides those relating to religion, and many have argued that our civilisation today began with the European quest of knowledge from the Muslim Arabs and other Muslim races, and the West of course had a head start in the Industrial Age.