"Can Asians think?"

That, of course, happens in the West, too, but I see the overall distinction. While I was reading your book, I kept thinking that "Asian" was such a broad term. How do you distinguish between East Asian societies and Muslim societies?

It is true that Asia is very diverse. But it is not a purely geographic concept, and I often use my own personal example to show what I mean. I'm ethnically a Sindi -- Sind is now part of Pakistan. My family is Hindu but the script that I learned to write as a child is Arabic. You talk about Hindu-Muslim clashes, and here you have a Hindu like me, whose mother had to flee because of the [India-Pakistan] partition, but who learned the Arabic script as a child. This is how civilizations cross into each other. Even though Singapore, where I live, is surrounded by Islamic societies, the underlying cultural bedrock is Hindu.

If you travel Northeast to China and Japan, one of their most important cultural strains is the Buddhist strain which originated in India and which Indians empathize with. The movement of influence across the continent of Asia has been there for thousands of years. And even though there are some divides, they're not as fundamental as they appear to be.

Then again, yes, the challenges facing East Asian societies are different from those facing Islamic societies.

How much do you think religion has to do with holding these societies back?

I would say that one of the great leaps forward that the West made was to achieve secular societies. Decisions about where the society should go were taken out of the hands of the religious establishment and given to the elected establishment. That's a big leap that I hope all societies will follow.

You write that one of the major differences between Western societies and Asian societies is that within the West, there is zero prospect of war breaking out among the nations. Why is it not the same for Asian societies like India and Pakistan or North and South Korea?

What the West has been able to do is one of the most remarkable achievements in human history, one that we take for granted. This is not a cynical answer, but [these Asian countries] haven't fought the great wars yet. Europe had to go through centuries of warfare and the pain of World War I where hundreds of thousands of brilliant young minds were wasted in the trenches. You had to go through that searing experience to realize the futility of war. Tragically, many Asian societies haven't gone through that yet. And I hope that they don't have to go through that.

But the good news is another remarkable achievement that few people comment on: The guns have been silent in East Asia for quite a while. That again is no small achievement. This is a result of what I call the tidal wave of common sense that has swept through the region. And it helps that the biggest, most powerful country in the region has decided that the only way to succeed is through economic development and not through acquiring a huge military industrial complex. The fundamental mistake that the Soviet Union made was that they thought a military industrial complex was the road to success. The Chinese have taken the opposite road.

What about human rights in China? You have some controversial things to say about Western human rights campaigns.

That's why the book doesn't get reviewed.

Most Westerners feel that human rights is an issue that can't just be ignored.

Human rights is another wonderful human achievement. I don't want to be tortured. I don't want to have my nails pulled out. I don't want to be locked up in jail without anyone knowing where I am. I'm a human being. But I'm saying that the societies that have achieved a very high level of human rights did so at the end of a process. You have to go through economic development and the development of the middle class and certain institutions first. It can't be done overnight. If you look at the Balkans or parts of Africa, where democracy was parachuted into society without preparation, you can get disastrous results. Democracy can awaken nationalistic demons. One reason why Milosevic came into power is because he rode the Serbian nationalist tiger. He unleashed it. There are no checks and balances in many of these societies to contain these things. It's not easy.

So you don't feel it's the West's responsibility to demand that developing nations uphold high standards of human rights?

It is not the responsibility, but it is in the long-term interest of the West to take a long view. Just as [the Western nations] have taken centuries to get to where they are -- for example, for women and blacks to get the vote. It wasn't done overnight. The critical question to ask is whether or not the societies are marching in the right or wrong direction.

And how do you feel about China?

China has done an incredible amount in terms of improving the real lives of people, more so than any society in the history of man. That is the biggest thing that people want in the first phase of development. They need to have food, shelter and schooling. The transformation in the quality of life of the Chinese has been quite remarkable. Chinese society is opening and changing. Chinese will soon overtake English as the main language of the Internet. That's coming. If you have millions of Chinese minds roving on the Internet, you no longer have a closed society.

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