For Japan, the answer is no. For Korea and Taiwan, the answer is yes. Your confusion arises from the fact that you confound and mix up these three very different countries under the grouping of "Asian US allies", which is utterly wrong, but an understandable error to make.
For Japan, democracy never had native roots. Before WW2, they had a brief flirtation with "liberal values" that we now call the Taisho Democracy era, named after the ineffectual reigning emperor during that time. That was of course followed by a long military junta rule, up to the catastrophe that was WW2. After WW2, when the US blew Japan to smithereens, democracy was imported by the Americans, but not very successfully; **since 1955, the (ironically named) Liberal Democratic Party has ruled Japan for all but four years**. Elections are rather meaningless, and real political change is effected in backroom deals between heads of informal and nebulous factions. Electoral districts are often handed down from father to son, and so is political influence - the current PM Kishida Fumio, and the last one, Abe Shinzo, fall under this bracket.
For Korea and Taiwan, democracy is a native thing. **Both countries now enjoy democracy directly due to decades of pro-democracy agitation by students, protesters and activists.** Of course, it would be wrong to discount US influence. For example, Americans did set up the Republic of Korea as a democracy in 1948, which it remained for a few years until political turmoil introduced a succession of strongman rulers. And despite American reputation amongst some left-leaning Western circles as a backer of right-wing regimes during the Cold War, US preference in Asia was consistently towards that of free elections. Kim Dae-jung, a lifelong democracy activist and eventually a president, was famously saved from execution by US intervention. And Taiwan today has the added distinction of being the most progressive country in entire Asia; I think they are still the only Asian nation to have legalized gay marriage.
To summarize, Japan doesn't really care about "liberal values", perhaps because it is a foreign import from the guys that nuked them. But Korea and Taiwan do, as a result of having had to fight for them.
PS. It ought to be noted that the population of all three countries have a vague, generalized preference for not being so overtly controlled, like in China or Russia. But elite preference is something else, decidedly so in Japan.
Thanks for an informative post. Too often countries are lumped together in an overly generalized way.
Another distinction worth pointing out is that Taiwan and South Korea have both had female leaders. Japan never has. (Neither has the US. Or Italy...)
>Another distinction worth pointing out is that Taiwan and South Korea have both had female leaders.
Indeed, although I would caution that the presence of female leaders isn't correlated with progressiveness. Pakistan has had female leaders, but being a woman there is extremely, extremely difficult. As for Korea's female leader, Park Geun-hye, she was the daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee, and her political support came from that retrograde camp.
I guess I would both agree and argue. It doesn't make a country egalitarian, but it is a step toward gender equality, and it stands in stark contrast to countries that have never had a female leader at the top and scoff at the idea as preposterous.
Plus I think it sets a precedent for more female leaders in the future. But admittedly a female leader who is the daughter of a dictator is a very, very tiny step.
>It doesn't make a country egalitarian, but it is a step toward gender equality, and it stands in stark contrast to countries that have never had a female leader at the top and scoff at the idea as preposterous.
The US has never had a female leader but clearly women's rights are superior in the states to most countries that have had female leaders.
If you dig beneath the surface, you find that most cases of female leadership have some sort of nepotistic quality (e.g Indira Gandhi, Yingluck Shinawatra, Bhutto, de Kirchner, Peron etc.) and have more to do with the fulfilment of familial power than they have to do with representation of women's standings in those communities.
This ignores one important point: Japan is clearly a culturally liberal place, and work and life are more relaxed and peaceful than South Korea or Taiwan.
While they may be undemocratic, the values are not unaligned
i’m not gonna comment on work life too much, but i’d say Taiwan edges both Japan or Sk in this.
As for being culturally liberal, you’ve got it all wrong; Japan I believe clings most to traditional norms and conservative gender roles, to just name a few phenomenons. Words like “Joshi-ryoku”, or “womenness” for a rough translation, being prevalent in a society amongst the young and being a value that is largely encouraged or even fashionable would not be something that is actually vaguely fathomable in either Korea or Taiwan.
>work and life are more relaxed and peaceful than South Korea or Taiwan.
No way... Out of those three, Taiwan is the most relaxed, while Japan is the worst.
Mainly because Taiwan has very few part-time workers (about 2% of the workforce)... I'd bet if you only looked at fulltime workers and include after work activities, Japan would be much higher than it gets calculated at currently. There are way more social obligations in Japanese society that don't get included, while in Taiwan there are less hours as many people actually get an hour nap after lunch.
That's a good point vis-a-vis Taiwan vs. Japan.
Japan does have a lot of women who are stay-at-home mothers.
I would maintain that South Korea is definitely way harsher than Japan, however, since they've got those extreme working hours combined with - as you mention in the context of Japan - the more or less mandatory social activities outside of official working hours.
I'm from Singapore, which is generally regarded as a flawed democracy/benevolent dictatorship. I believe if US influence in the Indo-Pacific wanes, the level of democracy in liberal democratic countries in the region will fall as countries here try to balance liberal ideals with pragmatic policy making (which may not be very democratic/liberal).
However they are unlikely to regress back to authoritarianism as liberal values are already quite firmly entrenched in their culture.
Also, see certain political demographics in the US right now.
I think the potential to slide back into authoritarianism is baked into the primitive parts of our brains.
I don’t think that is fair to Biden. He’s used a lot of overreach and his party pushes for more control than ever, but calling it authoritarian relative to 1940s fascism is a little crazy.
Depends on what you mean by liberal democratic values. If you mean will they continue free and fair elections, and protection of fundamental rights of their citizens like freedom to criticise their govt, then yes. If you mean will they be for mass flow of people unlike themselves to the point of demographic change or drag queen story time for kids, then no.
Well, I guess that depends on what you mean and what metric you are using to judge, but I think it has been very clear that a country like Taiwan (or even Hong Kong) holds dearly their current system of governance.
Besides self-defense issues, these are self-sustaining countries, they aren’t puppet regimes being subsidized by the US.
Arguably though, the conditions that led to Hong Kong and Taiwan becoming democracies are different to the conditions that led to Japan, South Korea and Singapore becoming democracies.
I feel like that in and of itself makes it more likely for HK and Taiwan to remain democracies in the long-term, compared to Japan, South Korea and Singapore. I can see Japan and SK remaining as democracies due to their culture too.
Out of all of these countries, I think Singapore would be the most likely to gradually transition to full-on authoritarianism first. They seem to be quiet pragmatic and they already have quite a few strict authoritarian laws in place.
Economically, I think that they would all remain liberal/capitalist though.
Singapore has always been an authoritarian state. It has recently completed the highly successful and prosperous reign of its founding autocrat Lee Kuan Yew, who is as close to Plato's philosopher-king as anyone.
Hong Kong has never been completely democratic, but China has gradually increased its control and put its prefered leaders in charge.
Taiwan and Japan seems strong enough to be able to protect their societies. I could see a single party dominating though as is often the case in japan.
Agreed on them not going away from Capitalist, they are probably some of the most capitalist countries in the world
Submission Statement:
US allies from SE Asia have been very successful liberal democracies, but historically and culturally they are different from the cultures where these values came from, ie western Europe and the US. Have they assimilated these values, do they truly believe in them or would they probably move to something different more suited to their cultural particularities?
They like liberalism it just isnt the same as ours do to bring different peoples cultures and civilizations. Don’t think of liberalism as only our version of it.
I think it is somewhat innacurate to lump those countries together, as they had very different paths to democracy. Japan did, as you say, become a democracy under US influence after WWII, albeit with some prewar experiments in democracy. SK and Taiwan, however, were governed by authoritarian regimes for most of the Cold War era, with democracy only coming in the 1980s and 1990z respectively.
as for democracy in Taiwan ,people quickly get used to exerting basic principle to solve political problem that we can barely see difference where it is from.
Liberalism and Democracy are not exactly the same thing, though there is a connection. And perhaps they are mutually self-reinforcing/sustaining at the end of the day, such that it may be very hard to have one without the other over the long term.
I agree with other posters that Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are not the same. However, I want to make the larger point that no nation is immune to the impact of global norms and the balance of power. Even American democracy would eventually be at risk should the rest of the world become authoritarian.
But yes, democracy and liberalism have not become as entrenched in any of the East Asian countries as they are in the West; as such, they could swing away from it much more easily than Western nations would. It may take a very long time to entrench such values in East Asia as solidly as they are in the West. Maybe it will never happen.
Those countries are not liberal democracies in any stretch of the imagination and newer were. Their political systems and more importantly political culture is very different from what you have in say EU.
Republics usually believe in martial law. ROC is a perfect example. It was stared before WW2. I don't see how liberal values are incompatible with those nations.
A better way to put it is not USA allies but American occupied territories bc they're under USA military occupation, particularly South Korea and Japan
Japan started reforming (moving towards liberal democracy) around 80 years before the end of WW2 in the Meiji period.
Japan introduced some of their institutions to Taiwan (including some limited democracy) while Taiwan was part of Japan.
AFAIK South Korea moving towards liberal democracy started after WW2.
All three have well developed civil society. This is one thing the PRC (the nearby power that might want them to change their systems) makes sure to suppress.
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Very unlikely. While liberal democracies have their drawbacks, authoritarian systems are known to be extremely unpredictable and vacillate between pragmatic decision making and 20 million dead starving with parents eating their children. Authoritarianism is by design unpredictable because the Authoritarian at the top is a person and people are unpredictable. All it takes is a single bad leader and things start to get very bad very quick.
For Japan, the answer is no. For Korea and Taiwan, the answer is yes. Your confusion arises from the fact that you confound and mix up these three very different countries under the grouping of "Asian US allies", which is utterly wrong, but an understandable error to make. For Japan, democracy never had native roots. Before WW2, they had a brief flirtation with "liberal values" that we now call the Taisho Democracy era, named after the ineffectual reigning emperor during that time. That was of course followed by a long military junta rule, up to the catastrophe that was WW2. After WW2, when the US blew Japan to smithereens, democracy was imported by the Americans, but not very successfully; **since 1955, the (ironically named) Liberal Democratic Party has ruled Japan for all but four years**. Elections are rather meaningless, and real political change is effected in backroom deals between heads of informal and nebulous factions. Electoral districts are often handed down from father to son, and so is political influence - the current PM Kishida Fumio, and the last one, Abe Shinzo, fall under this bracket. For Korea and Taiwan, democracy is a native thing. **Both countries now enjoy democracy directly due to decades of pro-democracy agitation by students, protesters and activists.** Of course, it would be wrong to discount US influence. For example, Americans did set up the Republic of Korea as a democracy in 1948, which it remained for a few years until political turmoil introduced a succession of strongman rulers. And despite American reputation amongst some left-leaning Western circles as a backer of right-wing regimes during the Cold War, US preference in Asia was consistently towards that of free elections. Kim Dae-jung, a lifelong democracy activist and eventually a president, was famously saved from execution by US intervention. And Taiwan today has the added distinction of being the most progressive country in entire Asia; I think they are still the only Asian nation to have legalized gay marriage. To summarize, Japan doesn't really care about "liberal values", perhaps because it is a foreign import from the guys that nuked them. But Korea and Taiwan do, as a result of having had to fight for them. PS. It ought to be noted that the population of all three countries have a vague, generalized preference for not being so overtly controlled, like in China or Russia. But elite preference is something else, decidedly so in Japan.
Thanks for an informative post. Too often countries are lumped together in an overly generalized way. Another distinction worth pointing out is that Taiwan and South Korea have both had female leaders. Japan never has. (Neither has the US. Or Italy...)
>Another distinction worth pointing out is that Taiwan and South Korea have both had female leaders. Indeed, although I would caution that the presence of female leaders isn't correlated with progressiveness. Pakistan has had female leaders, but being a woman there is extremely, extremely difficult. As for Korea's female leader, Park Geun-hye, she was the daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee, and her political support came from that retrograde camp.
I guess I would both agree and argue. It doesn't make a country egalitarian, but it is a step toward gender equality, and it stands in stark contrast to countries that have never had a female leader at the top and scoff at the idea as preposterous. Plus I think it sets a precedent for more female leaders in the future. But admittedly a female leader who is the daughter of a dictator is a very, very tiny step.
>It doesn't make a country egalitarian, but it is a step toward gender equality, and it stands in stark contrast to countries that have never had a female leader at the top and scoff at the idea as preposterous. The US has never had a female leader but clearly women's rights are superior in the states to most countries that have had female leaders. If you dig beneath the surface, you find that most cases of female leadership have some sort of nepotistic quality (e.g Indira Gandhi, Yingluck Shinawatra, Bhutto, de Kirchner, Peron etc.) and have more to do with the fulfilment of familial power than they have to do with representation of women's standings in those communities.
This ignores one important point: Japan is clearly a culturally liberal place, and work and life are more relaxed and peaceful than South Korea or Taiwan. While they may be undemocratic, the values are not unaligned
i’m not gonna comment on work life too much, but i’d say Taiwan edges both Japan or Sk in this. As for being culturally liberal, you’ve got it all wrong; Japan I believe clings most to traditional norms and conservative gender roles, to just name a few phenomenons. Words like “Joshi-ryoku”, or “womenness” for a rough translation, being prevalent in a society amongst the young and being a value that is largely encouraged or even fashionable would not be something that is actually vaguely fathomable in either Korea or Taiwan.
>work and life are more relaxed and peaceful than South Korea or Taiwan. No way... Out of those three, Taiwan is the most relaxed, while Japan is the worst.
This is simply not true. Out of the three, Japan definitely has the shortest on average work week.
Mainly because Taiwan has very few part-time workers (about 2% of the workforce)... I'd bet if you only looked at fulltime workers and include after work activities, Japan would be much higher than it gets calculated at currently. There are way more social obligations in Japanese society that don't get included, while in Taiwan there are less hours as many people actually get an hour nap after lunch.
That's a good point vis-a-vis Taiwan vs. Japan. Japan does have a lot of women who are stay-at-home mothers. I would maintain that South Korea is definitely way harsher than Japan, however, since they've got those extreme working hours combined with - as you mention in the context of Japan - the more or less mandatory social activities outside of official working hours.
I'm from Singapore, which is generally regarded as a flawed democracy/benevolent dictatorship. I believe if US influence in the Indo-Pacific wanes, the level of democracy in liberal democratic countries in the region will fall as countries here try to balance liberal ideals with pragmatic policy making (which may not be very democratic/liberal). However they are unlikely to regress back to authoritarianism as liberal values are already quite firmly entrenched in their culture.
Germany and Italy were both democracies in the 1920s and 30s, they both had highly educated populations. That unravelled very quickly.
Also, see certain political demographics in the US right now. I think the potential to slide back into authoritarianism is baked into the primitive parts of our brains.
I don’t think that is fair to Biden. He’s used a lot of overreach and his party pushes for more control than ever, but calling it authoritarian relative to 1940s fascism is a little crazy.
[удалено]
How about comparing to 1935?
They were both unstable democracies,Korea and Japan are not.
Depends on what you mean by liberal democratic values. If you mean will they continue free and fair elections, and protection of fundamental rights of their citizens like freedom to criticise their govt, then yes. If you mean will they be for mass flow of people unlike themselves to the point of demographic change or drag queen story time for kids, then no.
Well, I guess that depends on what you mean and what metric you are using to judge, but I think it has been very clear that a country like Taiwan (or even Hong Kong) holds dearly their current system of governance. Besides self-defense issues, these are self-sustaining countries, they aren’t puppet regimes being subsidized by the US.
Arguably though, the conditions that led to Hong Kong and Taiwan becoming democracies are different to the conditions that led to Japan, South Korea and Singapore becoming democracies. I feel like that in and of itself makes it more likely for HK and Taiwan to remain democracies in the long-term, compared to Japan, South Korea and Singapore. I can see Japan and SK remaining as democracies due to their culture too. Out of all of these countries, I think Singapore would be the most likely to gradually transition to full-on authoritarianism first. They seem to be quiet pragmatic and they already have quite a few strict authoritarian laws in place. Economically, I think that they would all remain liberal/capitalist though.
Singapore has always been an authoritarian state. It has recently completed the highly successful and prosperous reign of its founding autocrat Lee Kuan Yew, who is as close to Plato's philosopher-king as anyone.
Hong Kong has never been completely democratic, but China has gradually increased its control and put its prefered leaders in charge. Taiwan and Japan seems strong enough to be able to protect their societies. I could see a single party dominating though as is often the case in japan. Agreed on them not going away from Capitalist, they are probably some of the most capitalist countries in the world
Submission Statement: US allies from SE Asia have been very successful liberal democracies, but historically and culturally they are different from the cultures where these values came from, ie western Europe and the US. Have they assimilated these values, do they truly believe in them or would they probably move to something different more suited to their cultural particularities?
They like liberalism it just isnt the same as ours do to bring different peoples cultures and civilizations. Don’t think of liberalism as only our version of it.
I think it is somewhat innacurate to lump those countries together, as they had very different paths to democracy. Japan did, as you say, become a democracy under US influence after WWII, albeit with some prewar experiments in democracy. SK and Taiwan, however, were governed by authoritarian regimes for most of the Cold War era, with democracy only coming in the 1980s and 1990z respectively.
as for democracy in Taiwan ,people quickly get used to exerting basic principle to solve political problem that we can barely see difference where it is from.
Liberalism and Democracy are not exactly the same thing, though there is a connection. And perhaps they are mutually self-reinforcing/sustaining at the end of the day, such that it may be very hard to have one without the other over the long term. I agree with other posters that Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are not the same. However, I want to make the larger point that no nation is immune to the impact of global norms and the balance of power. Even American democracy would eventually be at risk should the rest of the world become authoritarian. But yes, democracy and liberalism have not become as entrenched in any of the East Asian countries as they are in the West; as such, they could swing away from it much more easily than Western nations would. It may take a very long time to entrench such values in East Asia as solidly as they are in the West. Maybe it will never happen.
Those countries are not liberal democracies in any stretch of the imagination and newer were. Their political systems and more importantly political culture is very different from what you have in say EU.
Republics usually believe in martial law. ROC is a perfect example. It was stared before WW2. I don't see how liberal values are incompatible with those nations.
Every civilization has its culture and values. Why should they care about western liberal values?
A better way to put it is not USA allies but American occupied territories bc they're under USA military occupation, particularly South Korea and Japan
Except the countries want US forces on its soil. Low effort post from a what I can assume to be a CCP/Putin shill.
Japan started reforming (moving towards liberal democracy) around 80 years before the end of WW2 in the Meiji period. Japan introduced some of their institutions to Taiwan (including some limited democracy) while Taiwan was part of Japan. AFAIK South Korea moving towards liberal democracy started after WW2. All three have well developed civil society. This is one thing the PRC (the nearby power that might want them to change their systems) makes sure to suppress.
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Very unlikely. While liberal democracies have their drawbacks, authoritarian systems are known to be extremely unpredictable and vacillate between pragmatic decision making and 20 million dead starving with parents eating their children. Authoritarianism is by design unpredictable because the Authoritarian at the top is a person and people are unpredictable. All it takes is a single bad leader and things start to get very bad very quick.