Asia's Needs and Western Policy

by BARBARA WARD

1

THE revolution that is changing the face of Asia today is fundamentally a continuation of what has been the basic impulse of the East for the last 150 years: the impulse to catch up in power and prestige with the West. But since World War II the desire for modernization has begun to spread beyond the small educated Asian elite to the people at large, 80 per cent of whom — save in Japan — are still peasants. For them modernization means simply that “things could be better”; but, given their traditional fatalism, this is perhaps the most revolutionary change of all. It could not be expected that they would understand the economic and administrative implications of their new state of mind. It is a mood of aggressive expectation, all the stronger for being rooted in ignorance. But, for the governments of Asia, it represents a time bomb in the basement of their political structure.

The preconditions and preliminaries of modernization in Asia are formidable. The provision of a capital base of power, transport, and industry implies the withdrawal of resources from direct consumption, and naturally this process creates hardship. In the East, the upward leap of the birth rate has preceded industrialization. In India, for instance, the reckoning is that probably two thirds of any likely annual gain in economic productivity will be swallowed up by the yearly increase of over 4 million in the population. Under these conditions, the transfer of resources from consumption to saving means the depressing of an already depressed standard.

There is a lack of trained manpower in Asia quite as acute as the shortage of capital. One reason development under the first Indian fiveyear plan is some 15 per cent below budgetary estimates is that, particularly in the provincial administrations, the number of men competent to lay out an industrial scheme are simply not available. Lack of trained agricultural experts rather than lack of resources is at present the limiting factor in the growth of India’s rural community projects and extension services. These discrepancies will tend to grow greater as the whole pace of development gathers momentum under the second plan. In short, in India as in the rest of Asia, it is often easier at this stage to allot resources to a project than to find the manpower and the technical skill necessary to take the project forward to actual construction.

Inevitably, all over Asia, there is a gap between the possibility of physical performance and the aroused aspirations of the masses. Under any conditions, such a situation contains political dynamite at least in internal politics, but with Asia and the world divided between a Communist and a free form of society, there is no restraining the explosive element behind domestic frontiers. The polarization of Asian ambition between India and China is perhaps the dominant political fact in Asia today. Both these vast, ancient, overpopulated communities are trying to do fundamentally the same thing: complete the modernization of their communities. But they are trying to do so by opposite means: in India by persuasion, coöperation, and decentralized democratic planning; in China by the strong coercion of bureaucratic dictatorship. The success of one method or the other will set the pattern for Asia. Even their relative speed of development is being watched searchingly in order to determine which model is to be preferred. Moreover, the trial of strength and method has implications beyond Asia. The Soviet Union is deeply involved in China’s success, and the Western world should be equally concerned in the outcome of the Indian experiment.

Western policy-makers, however, appear to have been working on the supposition that the outlook for free Asia is reasonably secure. At least, this is the only assumption that seems to explain the relative lack of any clear Western policy for the new phase in Asian development. Such an estimate can be based on only two premises — that “the wave of the future” is on the side of freedom, and that Western policies are adequate to counter any potential drift toward the Communist side.

Perhaps something of a case can be made for both points of view. One can point to the extent to which Western ideals of freedom and tolerance have penetrated such communities as India, Burma, and Japan. One can argue that Communist planning has failed, even in Russia, to solve the problem of agricultural expansion and peasant content; yet these, in Asia, today are the key to the next phase of economic development. One can go further and underline the undeniable fact that what Asia most needs is capital and skilled manpower and fuller training, and that genuine surplus capital and an advanced technological society exist primarily in the West.

At this point, the second line of argument comes into play — that, in fact, the Western powers are pursuing a successful policy of helping free Asia to help itself. Point Four programs, technical assistance, the Colombo Plan — all these are means of making Western wealth and Western skill available to the East. Moreover, these new contacts are calculated to undo some of the unhappy memories lingering on from the days of Western imperial supremacy. The West’s racialism and sense of superiority are giving place, especially among young people, to a feeling for the unity of the family of man and to a sense of kinship in all human affairs. A revolution has also occurred in Western economic policies, and the harsh pursuit of gain has been softened by the radical change in Western labor-management relations.

This democratizing of Western economic life has had its repercussions in Asia. The welfare state has proved an ideal which in India and Burma can be contrasted with the inhuman order of Communism. On a smaller and more intimate scale, the enlightened managerial policies and generous labor relations of many Western firms have earned the praise of Asian ministers. For instance, T. T. Krishnamachari, the Indian Minister for Commerce and Industry, has pointed to certain British and American firms in Calcutta and Bombay as models which Indian business ought to follow. Why, then, with so many forces, conscious and unconscious, working for the preservation of freedom and Western standards, should the West regard the fateful duel between Indian and Chinese development with any more than friendly curiosity?

2

UNHAPPILY for the future of constructive Western influence in Asia, it can be shown that the premises upon which this optimism is based are false. The Western aid programs already in operation are inadequate. The tendency in the field of manpower is toward a reduction of Western help. Most serious of all, the latest trends in Asia suggest that the Communists may be about to gain a decisive advantage in a field where, hitherto, the Western powers have felt reasonably secure •— the field of technical assistance.

The inadequacy of the flow of capital from West to East is obvious from the figures. Given an increase of population in Asia of the order of 1.6 per cent a year, to secure even a small increase in per capita income — say, a modest one per cent — would require fresh capital investment of almost $6 billion a year. The annual rate of saving in Asia today is running between and $4 billion. The gap is, on the most conservative assumptions, some $2 billion. To achieve the rates normal in more advanced communities, investment would have to be doubled — and the gap would double with it. But Western aid is not even matching the more modest figure. The Colombo Plan’s $3 billion is being spent over six years. American aid to Asia, although it has grown steadily since 1950, is still under a billion dollars for purely economic assistance. Nor is there any apparent likelihood of upward revision. On the contrary, John Hollister, the head of the International Cooperation Administration, has spoken of his hope of securing a reduction in 1957.

The movement of private capital is too small to fill in any part of the gap. Indeed, in some years the withdrawal of capital, particularly from disturbed areas such as Indonesia, has offset any gain. Whether or not future Western aid is morally desirable or strategically necessary, one fact at least is clear: Asian need greatly exceeds any of the measures taken so far to meet it.

In addition to capital, Asia needs Western technicians and experts, and there is no certainty that there will be enough to meet the scale of Asian development. The ending of such services as the Indian Civil Service, though inevitable in the disappearance of colonial status, removed from Asia men of capacity, integrity, wide friendships, and lifelong experience. The same process is at ork in Malaya. The contributions of the devoted colonial servant have tended to be overlooked in the general condemnation of imperialism. His role as guardian of justice, as safeguard of security and hence of economic advance, as purveyor of Western standards and ideals, has been neglected. That he had to go was historically inevitable, but we now know the gap in salutary Western influence that his going has left.

A decline in Western business activity is likely, though perhaps not inevitable. Some British capital is being repatriated from India, and foreign concerns are removing themselves from Asia’s more troubled areas. New capital is hampered by political uncertainty and the decline of local efficiency. Even where foreign capital is welcome — as it is in India or Burma —obstacles stand in the way. The gap between Western and Asian living standards is such that a fairly modest scale of pay can make a Westerner a Croesus by local Asian standards, and this at a time when social equality and the limitation of incomes are among Asia’s most popular goals. If the Western businessman is not paid enough to induce him to work in Asia, he will not go. But if he is paid enough, in India at least, the effort is being made to remove it all again by taxation. It is simply a matter of income. The recent Indian Companies Act appears to impose, together with some salutary reforms, a number of onerous restrictions upon legitimate business. Indeed, some Asian governments appear not too concerned if the outcome is an exodus of foreign businessmen, for they prefer responsible posts to be in the hands of their own people.

Missionary enterprise is being discouraged, if not curtailed. There is also likely to be a decline in the number of Western educators, since Asian universities prefer their own national staffs. Teacher-exchanges will become more difficult when the use of English falls away. The first Indian university to abandon teaching in English — at Ahmedabad — took the decisive step last year. There are bound to be others.

It is true that some new mechanisms exist to secure the transfer to Asia of the needed men. For instance, the Specialized Agencies and the Technical Assistance Board of the United Nations give international status to the Western experts provided under their auspices, while the Colombo Plan has made possible an inter-Commonwealth exchange on a multiracial basis. Nevertheless there can be no certainty of a continuous flow of trained Western manpower to the East. In the first place, there are simply not enough Western experts available. In the first four years of its operation, the Colombo Plan secretariat could satisfy only half the requests sent to it for expert advice and for opportunities for training abroad. In 1953, all the experts dispatched to Asia by all United Nations agencies did not number more than four hundred in an area which includes over a billion peopleand this four hundred included such relatively esoteric missions as that recording the bird calls of Baluchistan. Large-scale development of the kind Asia needs most urgently has at least quintupled in the world since 1945, and the domestic economies of Western nations are booming. Everywhere the demand for experts has soared beyond the supply.

Also, the quality of Western experts is often not all that it should be. Many of the men who volunteered for service in the Colombo Plan have lacked the proper qualifications. Not all the Specialized Agencies have contrived to reach the level of recruitment and performance, say, of the International Bank. Asian governments or international organizations can secure the best Western talent when it is only a question of spending a few months working on a commission of inquiry or a special report, and this is in itself a great advantage and keeps fresh and friendly most valuable contacts between East and West. But there is a deep need for the technician or official who will remain not simply for a short stay but for five years or a decade.

3

THE most ominous threat to Western influence in Asia is developing today less as a result of Western omissions — although a valuable decade has in many ways been lost—than as a result of the new and aggressive policy pursued by the Soviet Union. The Communists have long had certain psychological advantages in Asia. By suppressing all mention of the degree of industrial development achieved under the tsars and of Western help made available under the first Five-Year Plan, they have been able to explain Russia’s industrial growth under the Soviet system in terms of a nearmiracle. Here was the system which from nothing and without external aid pulled itsell up by its own bootstraps to become one of the most powerful nations in the world. It has been able to paint itself as the country which threw out “the imperialists” and grew by its own efforts. We must not underestimate the importance of such propaganda in an area as emotionally committed as Asia to the double goal of advancement and independence.

But the Russians could not exploit this favorable economic climate in the years immediately after the war. Before 1953, the Soviet Union’s activities in the field of foreign aid were confined — in Asia — to China. A $300 million loan was granted in 1950. Participation in the construction of 141 enterprises was promised in 1953, and in the following year $230 million more was advanced, together with the transfer of various shares previously held by Russia in Chinese railways and other enterprises. The Soviet Union was too involved in its own reconstruction to use its resources as instruments of diplomacy in Asia; and if at that time the Western powers had vigorously established a forwardlooking policy in the field of technical and economic aid, they would have taken a lead which by now it might have been impossible to overtake. But the opportunity was lost. The approach was, as we have seen, marginal, piecemeal, and perfunctory.

Today the field is no longer open. In the autumn of 1953, with no fanfare and very little propaganda, Soviet policy was reversed over the whole field of economic aid. The Russians made their first contribution to the United Nations Technical Assistance Board-to which the United States still hesitated to allot funds. Since then, some $8 million has been made available, and constituent Russian republics and satellites have started to follow suit.

The Russians have not confined themselves to the United Nations approach. They are offering their own version of the Colombo Plan and Point Four projects. As a result of the proposals they made at the meeting of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East in February, 1954, delegations from most Asian countries— save the Philippines and Thailand—have visited Russia to discuss credits, trade treaties, industrial training, and the supply of equipment. India is considering Russia’s offer to train Indian technicians; and although an Indian industrial mission reported unfavorably on the standards of Russian equipment and the scale of help available, the Indian government has accepted the offer of Soviet help in building a million-ton steel plant. A Russian loan of $91 million at an interest rate of 2 1/2 per cent has been promised, and Russia will oversee construction and train technicians both in India and Russia.

Burma has been able to exchange surplus rice for Russian industrial goods. Indonesia is receiving help from Rumania and Czechoslovakia in training oil technicians; Russia has offered assistance and technical training for cement manufacture and mining. Russian trade treaties now include offers of technical help and of industrial equipment, and many Asian countries have signed such treaties.

But perhaps the clearest instances of Russia’s new-found confidence in the efficacy of economic aid as a weapon both of strategy and diplomacy are to be found in two areas of deep concern to the West. For some time now, the Soviet government has been building up its program of assistance to Afghanistan. Loans at low interest rates have been advanced to develop the wheat industry. A pipeline has been offered to supply Russian oil. Various joint industrial ventures are projected. At the same time, Russian military assistance is proffered, and the Soviet diplomats thus serve an indirect notice on Pakistan that, since it has allied itself to the West, it may find a troublesome neighbor in an Afghanistan that is already stirring up frontier trouble among the Pathans.

4

THERE is the further risk that, as time goes on, the Russians may become the most powerful influence in Asia simply because they will have the manpower available for technical assistance and the West will not. An American estimate made early last year put Russia’s present supply of technicians at 400,000 engineers and 150,000 scientists, against America’s 500,000 and 200,000 respectively, but it showed a much higher rate of training in the Soviet Union. Russia maintains 3700 technical training schools, with an enrollment of 1.6 million, whereas the United States has about 1000 such establishments, with 50,000 students. Russia is expecting to produce 45,000 engineers in 1956, while America’s output, which has been running at only 20,000, will rise to 27,000 in 1950 and 34,000 in 1957. True, the United Kingdom, Western Germany, and France, at least, should be included to swell the Western supply. Even so, the joint figure may well be less than the Russian level. It may be that Soviet mass production results in lower qualifications, but again and again Russian performance has belied the expectations of those who question Russian quality.

If no more were at issue than the technical advancement and industrialization of Asia, one might rejoice that trained manpower will be available from whatever source. But the Russian technician is a far more dogmatic and instructed missionary of his “way of life” than the casual and informal Westerner who imparts the values of his civilization — if he contrives to do so at all — by living them and demonstrating them in his contacts with Asian colleagues and pupils. Modernization in Asia achieved through Russian help and training can hardly avoid a totalitarian stamp. If the West is outclassed and outnumbered, the fading of its influence will not be simply likely —as it is today. It will be certain, and with it will go much of the hope that Asia can combine economic progress with political and social freedom.

Drift, overoptimism, a Micawberish belief that “something will turn up,” are all inadequate bases for a Western policy in Asia. If the West is to play a fruitful part in Asia, policy must be definite, the need for action accepted, and its direction clear. Probably the first need is to come to some settled conviction on the matter of Western economic aid. Estimates of the amount which can be usefully invested in Asia will vary. One might put the lower limit of an effective Western contribution at $2 billion annually. The sum might later increase with Asian expansion and, as development is consolidated, over some decades taper off again. What cannot be questioned is that the certainty of a given sum over a long period is a better basis for creative policy than bursts of alternating generosity and parsimony.

In other words, it is the principle of aid that needs to be accepted. Once it has become one of the longterm foundations of Western policy in Asia, the benefits which flow will be found to be far more than purely economic. Wise spending of the capital would entail joint Western-Asian planning on a basis of equality and the creation of permanent organs of consultation. This development in turn would do more than any other type of contact to take the sting out of old, deep-seated memories of “imperialism and exploitation.''

No stabilized long-term program of Western aid would be fully effective unless it were accompanied by new policies in the sphere of manpower. Given a preliminary recognition of necessity, Western governments can explore a wide variety of means for securing the presence in Asia of competent Westerners and the continued training and education of Asians in the West. On the side of government, there would seem to be a case for reconsidering the type of preparation for officials destined to overseas service. Of formal diplomacy in Asia, there may be very little. The new branch of the State Department — the International Cooperation Administration —could well prove the critical agency, and the type of preparation, in languages and skills, should perhaps more nearly resemble the specialized training once given to such British overseas services as the Levant Consular Service or the Sudan Civil Service. The idea of engineers and scientists in the work of diplomacy is strange only if diplomacy is thought of in an unduly restricted light. The ultimate aim-the maintenance of sound international relations—will need different instruments in different epochs, and today in Asia it may be fully as valuable to know how to lay out a drainage system as to draft a memorandum or an interdepartmental minute. Men trained as technicians for foreign service would also be available on loan to the Specialized Agencies, and thus the United Nations would gain by avoiding the haphazard methods of recruitment that often reduce the quality of its servants today.

In Britain, a parallel concept has been canvassed -that of setting up a Commonwealth Civil Service covering not only administrators but technicians and scientists, whose members would be available to any member government. In this way, a new method of preserving the spirit of service and the continuity of the old Colonial Service might be combined with the recognition that colonialism has vanished and that each Commonwealth government jealously guards its independence. In one joint Commonwealth Service, if Indian officials served in London, Australian soil scientists in Pakistan, Canadian engineers in Africa, all without racial and national difference, a combination of the old espritde corps and the new realities of independence might be secured. Such officials would also be available for the United Nations or for any country working within the Colombo Plan.

Nor should the needs of Asia be thought of exclusively in governmental terms. In one vital field, private enterprise and government could work together: in devising the inducements and safeguards needed to persuade private capital to risk the political and economic hazards of the new Asia. And there is need for much closer coöperation between government, private enterprise, and the academic world to devise a program of training for foreign students more equal to Asia’s needs.

But there is also much that private enterprise, acting on its own initiative, could accomplish. Hitherto, the attitude of business organizations toward operations in foreign countries has been to insist upon the safeguards — under treaties of commerce, friendship, and so forth—which capital, venturing abroad, wishes to secure. But it can be argued that Western enterprise would receive a more cordial welcome in Asia if, having required guarantees, it then in turn offered guarantees to the host country — guarantees of local training, of participation, of promotion for local officials. Many firms in fact observe such conditions. British firms in India are everywhere going into partnership with Indian business; the number of Indian directors has increased greatly —in fact, one large Canadian enterprise has only one non-Indian official in the whole concern. But this tendency could be formalized, canvassed, and extended.

Last of all, there is the contribution which Western universities and centers of learning could make in this era of new relationships between East and West. It is not simply a question of training. From somewhere—and from where better than the institutes of higher education? — must come a deeper understanding of the thought and culture and traditions of Eastern lands. In the past, Asian fear of Western power and aggression combined with Western arrogance and self-confidence has prevented contact at the profounder levels of intellectual and spiritual interest. The Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, who set themselves to master the languages and scriptures of Hindu and Confucian thought, were defeated by the intolerance and divided counsels of their Western superiors. The British nabobs of eighteenth-century India who learned Persian and interested themselves in local rites and ceremonials gave place to the Victorian official, a man no doubt “without fear and without reproach” but without interest or sympathy either. Today the barriers of prejudice could be thrown down and the work of understanding begin again.

Nor should Western scholars and students think that a new era of cultural exchange would benefit Asia exclusively. Every civilization is enriched by new contacts, and no one surveying ihe state of Atlantic society today is likely to maintain that it has need of no fresh insights, no renewal of its imagination, no diversion of its attention to fresh pursuits. Yet these prospects will not be realized by the mere flow of time and the pressure of events. Drift is against the West. The trend of circumstances favors the totalitarians rather than the free. If, in the next vital half-century, Western influences, the Western concept of freedom, Western institutions and ideals, are to continue to seem relevanl to Asia, the Western governments must substitute policy for laisser faire and they must do it soon.