Introduction

Market ideologies have a significant influence in East Asia (Chau and Yu, 1999). They justify governments’ attempts to encourage people to sell their labour as a commodity in the labour market, to see private services as better than statutory and voluntary services in meeting needs, and to believe that creating an attractive investment environment for capitalists is a national goal. Despite their influence, market ideologies fail to fulfil two important functions of a dominant ideology in their application to Asian economies, especially in Hong Kong and mainland China. They are unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for important phenomena such as why some Asian economies had an impressive economic performance over the past few decades until the Asian financial crisis. Nor are they able to provide a clear guide as to how to strengthen Asian people's cultural identity and traditional ideologies in the global age.

This chapter is intended to discuss these inadequacies and the East Asian governments’ attitude to them with reference to the view that ‘welfare is unAsian’. Four analytical tasks will be conducted. First, we discuss how the basic assumptions underlying the view that ‘welfare is unAsian’ are related to market ideologies. Second, we challenge the validity of these basic assumptions in order to expose the inadequacies of market ideologies. Third, we explain why some governments are keen to associate their rule with market ideologies despite their inadequacies. We argue that their eagerness to do so is due less to an ideological consideration than to a pragmatic calculation for meeting the requirements of capitalism and pleasing capitalists. Last, we show that their eagerness to strengthen capitalism and promote capitalists’ interests is intensified rather than undermined by the Asian crisis. These four tasks will be conducted with reference to Hong Kong and mainland China.

Is social welfare unAsian?

The answer to this question always carries ideological implications. A journalist, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, asserted that it was unAsian: