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Asian Values-Swiss Values?, Elmar Holenstein

Swiss American Historical Society Review

For years one is reading of "Asian values." Traveling through Asia, one is rubbing one's eyes. The whole of Asia, from the Bosporus and Ural all the way to the Pacific Ocean, is thrown into one great pot, as if they all, Turkic peoples and Mongols, Arabs, Iranians and Malaysians as well as Chinese, Koreans and Japanese had been educated by Confucius. Business people as well as political scientists who tell us of "Asiatic values" are flying in twelve hours from Frankfurt and Zurich to Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. Those shortcuts therefore?