<![CDATA[Look to Japan and China: can the Middle East learn from East Asia's success story?]>

Middle Eastern states can take a leaf out of East Asia's playbook, but differences in governance could stand in the way of their successful adoption of models from countries such as China, according to experts.

Speaking at the Middle East Institute's annual conference in Singapore, Yitzhak Shichor, a professor of political science and Asian studies at Israel's University of Haifa, said one such area of emulation was East Asia's stellar education systems.

Schools from the region often dominated university rankings, he said, and students from those countries came out on top in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) ranking released last month.

Students from mainland China, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan were ranked among the best in the global benchmarking test, which assessed 15-year-olds in science, mathematics and reading.

"The average number of schooling years in the Middle East is a little over six years. In East Asia, it's around 12," Shichor said.

Middle Eastern states could also study effective governance as well as how to deal with demographic issues from countries in the region, he added.

The two-day summit " which came amid tensions between the United States and Iran " focused on how the Middle East could learn from fast-growing East Asian nations.

Ezra Vogel, a professor of social sciences at Harvard University, kicked off the second day by cheering the storied past of East Asian countries.

Despite uncertainties following the end of World War II, he said, Japan had embraced the "modernisation process" in the West to train skilled technocrats who would later return to form the "basis for [its] government" and allow Japan to become the first industrialised East Asian country.

Students from mainland China, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan were ranked among the best in the Pisa benchmarking test. Photo: SCMP / K.Y. Cheng alt=Students from mainland China, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan were ranked among the best in the Pisa benchmarking test. Photo: SCMP / K.Y. Cheng

Vogel said Taiwan's take-off came not only from big industries such as chipmaking, but also from small businesses. Its close relations with Japanese business owners due to Tokyo's investment in the island before World War II accelerated its rise in the 1960s, as Japan started to look to Taiwan for business opportunities.

In Singapore, founding father Lee Kuan Yew and former deputy prime minister Goh Keng Swee contributed to the city state's success by inviting multinationals to operate there, as it lacked business knowledge and the connections with Japan boasted by South Korea and Taiwan.

"[There are] a wide variety of experiences in East Asia ... what I find common in all these patterns is that there were a group of people who provided stability in the country over a number of years," Vogel said.

These leaders connected local communities to the international economy, and drafted plans based on what they had seen abroad. "They provided a lot of freedom to the local people to compete as much as they could, and carried on peaceful relations with other countries to make it possible," he said.

But while some academics pointed out areas where Middle Eastern states could improve, others were more wary of adopting the East Asian model of success.

Mohammed Turki Al-Sudairi, head of the Asian Studies Unit at Saudi Arabia's King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies, said drawing lessons from contemporary China was not a new practice for Gulf states.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he said, there were various revolutionary regimes in the Middle East that looked at socialist experiences in Cuba, Vietnam and also China, under Mao Zedong's rule.

But the emergence of China in recent years has propelled Gulf elites to become "re-engaged with China and begin to think about it as a potential model for success for governance".

Gulf elites are seen as having "re-engaged" with China due to its emergence in recent years. Photo: Reuters alt=Gulf elites are seen as having "re-engaged" with China due to its emergence in recent years. Photo: Reuters

Al-Sudairi said there were salient features in this "imagined governing formula" that stood out. Firstly, it was the belief that the key to catalysing economic growth was to have the state play a strong role, one that exercised a "top-down, centralised" approach.

"Political elites have a very clear vision about where they want to take the country in terms of its developmental and economic outcomes and they already have a clear idea of what types of tools they would use to realise this vision," he said, citing the second belief.

The third was how society in socialist countries was often positioned as a "docile, industrialised, and a very disciplined character".

These assumptions would likely break down very quickly, Al-Sudairi said. "My impression is that a lot of the elites are not necessarily interested in the lessons that you learn with the governing experiences on the ground," he said.

"Rather, what they are interested in is constructing imagined governing models to justify certain policy choices that are made currently, especially in the post-Arab Spring, where there are calls for a much more centralised state that can manage the economy."

Pan Guang, director of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, also raised scepticism about whether a Chinese model could be adopted by Middle Eastern nations.

He said East Asian governments dealt with their mutual differences in regional forums, such as the East Asia Summit.

"Arab leaders have more and more controversies about Muslim brotherhood. Some countries support [it], but others think they are terrorists," Pan said. "Middle Eastern organisations do not work because conflict and controversies continue."

Sign up now for our 50% early bird offer from SCMP Research: China AI Report. The all new SCMP China AI Report gives you exclusive first-hand insights and analysis into the latest industry developments, and actionable and objective intelligence about China AI that you should be equipped with.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.