Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR. MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : SHANGRI-LA HOTEL, KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 23/05/94
Tajuk/Title : THE 27TH INTERNATIONAL GENERAL
MEETING OF THE PACIFIC BASIN
ECONOMIC COUNCIL "THE PACIFIC ERA
-- A VISION FOR THE FUTURE"
First of all, I would like to thank PBEC for inviting
me to speak before you today. I value this opportunity
because I know who really are the most important actors in
the making of the future of the Pacific.
2. It is not the great leaders of the Pacific who are the
most important builders of the Pacific community that is yet
to be. It is not the officials and bureaucrats who will
build the Pacific community of cooperative peace and
prosperity that I hope will flourish in the twenty-first
century.
3. It is not the great intellects and the powerful media
that will construct the Pax Pacifica that will be worthy of
the aspirations of the peoples of the Pacific. Most
certainly, all will have to rise to the challenge. At some
point or other, all will have to play the most critical of
roles.
4. Yet, right or wrong, it is simply my view that
the most important sustained builders of the Pacific
community that must be built in the days, weeks, years and
decades ahead will be the workers, managers and
entrepreneurs of the business communities of the countries
of the Pacific rim.
5. I do not say this because I am speaking before so many
captains of industry and commerce of this vast region,
before so many of the business leaders of the Pacific. I
have repeatedly stressed this point at meetings of
government leaders and at other meetings where such a view
is often regarded as heretical. I might as well repeat it
before an audience which must regard such a view as merely
obvious.
6. I am sure we can all agree that peace and stability are
essential pre-requisites for the Pacific Age. Without peace
and without stability, all the basic assumptions on progress
have to go back to the drawing board. Fortunately for us in
the Pacific, not perhaps for 150 years has the strategic
environment been so conducive for peace and stability. In so
many parts of the Pacific, peace and stability have already
broken out or are being strengthened.
7. I am fully aware of the awesome conflict potential in
the Korean peninsula that could change the entire strategic
picture and future of the Pacific. I know of the possibility
of the division of Canada. I am aware of the issues in
Mexico and some of the internal security concerns in north
and central America. But I am very confident that China
will not break up, that the Japanese are not going to lose
their senses and there will be no violent maritime conflict
in the region.
8. All these and other security issues that will be thrown
up in the course of time can be dealt with the old mind-set
of confrontation, power and deterrence, which can never
create a warm and cooperative peace, which can only
guarantee the rigidifying of a status quo and the vicious
circle of enmity, armament, suspicion and hatred. To be
sure, there are circumstances under which there is no better
choice. But the Pacific of today and tomorrow is a Pacific
of better choices.
9. There are now tremendous opportunities to go by a
different path, to cooperate with those with whom one
disagrees, with whom one has yet to come to an agreement.
There are so many opportunities to work with those whose
perspectives and interests differ from one's own yet
presents possibilities of harmonisation, or at worst an
agreement to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.
This is the path of cooperative security, of trying to get
along, of trying to understand one's adversary and the
security concerns of others, of trying to accommodate and to
embrace, to strengthen acquaintanceships, to build the bonds
of friendship.
10. It is a central paradox of peace-making that true peace
is best made when there is peace. It is too late when the
clouds of conflict have begun to gather. Now and in the
years ahead, to ensure the Pacific Era that we want to see,
we must together work intimately and diligently to build a
Pacific Peace worthy of the name of the ocean which washes
all our shores.
11. It also seems somewhat obvious that we should build not
only a community of cooperative peace but also mutual
prosperity. I believe there are at least two pillars for
such an endeavour which should be stressed at this point in
time.
12. The first is to ensure a Pacific market system which
unleashes the ferocious force of enterprise and catalyses
all the synergistic potential of the Pacific. The second is
to ensure the development of a Pacific economic system
firmly wedded to open regionalism.
13. We have seen the bankruptcy of the central command
economy. On the other hand, we have seen what can be done
when markets are opened and liberated and when goods and
services are freed to respond to the commands of the
marketplace rather than the specific targets and dictates of
bureaucrats, planners and politicians. We have seen what
China has been able to achieve, what Vietnam has been able
to accomplish. We should seek the further opening of the
transition economies and the wedding of all our economies to
the market system.
14. What makes sense within the context of the domestic
economy makes sense also within the international and
Pacific economy. The command economy makes nonsense in
terms of domestic economics. It makes nonsense in terms of
the international economy.
15. Our Pacific Era must also be built upon the firm
foundation of a liberalising Pacific economic system that is
fast reducing the obstacles to the flow of goods and
services. I believe that we owe it to the world and to
ourselves to also proceed on the basis of lowering the
obstacles to businesses located outside the Pacific rim. A
mercantilist Pacific makes as much sense as a mercantilist
Canada or a mercantilist Japan or a mercantilist United
States.
16. However macho we are on the Pacific, we must never
forget the global community. I believe we must escape the
trap that has been a source of weakness in Western Europe.
It is very difficult to find Europeans who believe that they
are incredibly Euro-centric. At the same time, I am
confident most of you will agree with me when I say that it
is difficult to find Europeans who are not in fact, whether
they know it or not, incredibly Euro-centric.
17. We of the Pacific must never forget our global frame of
reference and our global frame of operations. The Pacific
community which we should seek to build must not be
inward-oriented and discriminatory towards the rest of the
world. We would be foolish if we of the Pacific get
together in order to circle our wagons, to raise the
barricades and to keep everyone else out. Our Pacific
community must be open to the world, to the exports and the
investments, technology and comprehensive economic
penetration of the rest of the world.
18. Even as we must be committed to open globalism at the
global level, and to open super-regionalism at the Pacific
level, we must be committed to open regionalism in all the
various regional schemes upon which we embark. The North
American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and the free trade area
between Australia and New Zealand (ANZCERTA) must all seek
to reduce the barriers to external economies as well as
reducing the barriers to the participating member states.
The same must hold for whatever is tried in East Asia. Any
East Asian scheme for economic cooperation, including the
EAEC, which has been the victim of so much deliberate
misinformation, must be wedded to this idea of open
regionalism.
19. I have so far outlined what I mean by `cooperative
peace' and `cooperative mutual prosperity'. Let me try to
clarify what I mean by the term `a true Pacific Community'.
20. I believe that the true Pacific community that has to
be patiently built must be robust, must be infused by
friendship and a sense of community. It must be egalitarian
and democratic. And it must be beneficial to all of the
members of our Pacific family.
21. It must be a community that will endure, not a Pacific
construct founded on a transient passion or a temporary
association of convenience that might be here today and gone
tomorrow.
22. We should understand, indeed welcome, the enthusiasm of
those who have just discovered the Pacific. But the
building of such a true Pacific community is not a task to
which we should come with wide-eyed romanticism, idealism or
impatience. There is little room for romanticism and every
reason for being realistic, for exploiting pragmatism to its
fullest potential. Our idealism must be without illusion.
There is need for a constructive impatience but an even
greater need for sobriety and the stamina of the
long-distance runner.
23. We must be prepared for a journey of a thousand miles.
Not because there is virtue in long journeys, but because
the journey towards a true Pacific community must of
necessity be long. This is unfortunate. But that is the
way that it is.
24. Second, what we must build, I believe, is a
relationship between us based on a sense of community, "as
within a family or a group of friends".
25. A true Pacific community, a Pacific village or family
or group of friends will need to be founded on knowledge,
familiarity, understanding, empathy, mutual regard and
mutual respect.
26. Let us face the facts squarely. Many of us around this
Pacific rim are as strangers, whose acquaintanceship with
each other can be measured in terms of months rather than
years. Many of us hardly know each other, are hardly
familar with each other. It can be no surprise that there
are enormous gaps in understanding. Indeed, in basic
knowledge.
27. At present there appears to be a gross imbalance not
only in knowledge but also with regard to mutual respect.
One is sometimes tempted to think that those who know least
about others are the most likely to tell them what they
should be doing with regard to the running of their present
and the making of their future.
28. My advocacy of egalitarianism and democracy is not an
attempt to fly in the face of reality. In life, some will
always be more equal than others. Chile is not Canada.
Canada is not China. Hong Kong is not Japan. And Japan is
not the United States. Even within the family, we know that
there are older brothers and sisters. But the play of power
and size and leadership should take place within a roughly
egalitarian framework. Although the different shades of
grey will be there, we all know when something is definitely
non-egalitarian and when something is clearly egalitarian.
Whatever may have been the record of the past, in the
future, we cannot move forward, a true Pacific community
cannot be built, on the basis of hegemony and imperial
command.
29. We are also deeply committed to the building of a
Pacific community that is democratic and consensual and that
operates on the basis of democratic and consensual
principles. We all know how frustrating democracy can be.
But it is the best form so far devised for the governance of
society. This is as true for the governance of a civilised
community of states, as it is true for the governance of a
civilised community of citizens.
30. We all know how infuriatingly difficult it is to get a
consensus, especially when so many from so many different
backgrounds, perspectives and interests are involved. But
what is the alternative? To pretend agreement when there is
none? To go through the motions of adopting the finest
formulation of words, with no intent to see them through and
to honour them in the spirit as well as in the letter? To
sign agreements and to mount the most intense search for
loopholes even before the ink is dry? What is the
alternative to building a community through consensus? To
bulldoze? To bludgeon? To bully? You can legislate for
some things. But you cannot legislate for a meeting of the
minds, for a feeling of sympathy and affection between
friends and the bonds that bind a family together. A true
Pacific community can only be built through the deepening
and widening of consensus over a large range of shared ends
and shared perceptions on the means.
31. Most obviously, it is extremely important for
all who are involved in the Pacific process of community
building to feel that they are benefitting, that they are
getting something they would otherwise not get.
32. There are those who believe in historical inevitability
-- and the historical inevitability of the Pacific as the
future economic centre of gravity of the world. I believe
that things are inevitable only if we make them so.
33. Our `Pacific Era' will be stillborn if we quarrel and
fight amongst ourselves, if we divide the Pacific, if we
create discriminatory trading blocs, if we draw a line down
the Pacific, if we are unwilling to extend to each other the
normal rules and regulations -- like Most Favoured Nation
(MFN) -- that are the norms between trading economies.
34. I am sure you will also agree that a `Pacific Era'
cannot be sustained if we do not play fair, if we do not
open more fully to each other, if we do not further
liberalise our economies.
35. I am sure you will also agree that a `Pacific Era' will
not be fostered if we do not engage fully all the dynamic
possibilities of working together; if we do not exploit all
the synergistic opportunities afforded by the fact that each
of us have different strengths and comparative advantages.
36. Obviously, Governments have a major role to play. But
I do not believe that in the forseeable future Governments
have all that great a role to play. The Almighty help us if
we were to create the Pacific analogue of the `Eurocrats'
who have played such an interventionist role in Europe.
37. To try to build a Pacific community along the lines of
the European Community would be extremely disruptive and
damaging to the long term building of a Pacific community.
The conditions are not there. It would be disastrous.
38. Instead of a ton of legal documents, a phalanx of
bureaucracy forcing the pace of integration; instead of an
artificially forced process, what Governments should do is
merely establish the framework within which people-to-people
contact can flourish, the ambience and framework within
which entrepreneurs can go about their daily business of
profiting from Pacific dynamism, thereby building the
relationships of investment, trade and comprehensive
economic interdependence which are the brick, the steel and
the cement of our embryonic Pacific community.
39. Let me therefore end as I began, by stressing the
importance and the role of the private sector. You, ladies
and gentlemen are the most important builders.
40. Prosper from the Pacific. Prosper with the Pacific.
Build the web of mutual regard, interdependence and common
interest that will withstand the test of time. No more
solid foundation can be found for the making of a Pacific
Era that hopefully will span and go beyond the twenty-first
century.
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