When civilisations meet: What East Asia wants from the West

Abstract

One of the most notable features of the encounter between East Asia and the West in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the rapid and whole-hearted adoption of Western ideas and institutions by the two great Asian civilisations of Meiji Japan and Qing China. In the early twenty-first century, however, the response of East Asian cultures to the West has been marked by the closing of doors that were previously open to outside influences, amply demonstrated by recent events in the Philippines, the increasing emphasis on communist ideology in China, and long-term anti-Western rhetoric in North Korea. Has the opportunity for Asia to learn from the West now passed? Do East Asian nations still find anything of contemporary value in the civilisation of the West? This lecture will trace the ‘opening’ of East Asia to Western influences from the early modern period and suggest that the infiltration of Western ideas into the East Asian nations of the twenty-first century is likely to continue unabated for many more years.