clipped from: www.salon.com Lew Kwan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, used to justify one-party rule by suggesting "Asian values" supported authoritarian domination. The term "Asian values" was never easy to define and always controversial, but I heard an echo of old debates in a fascinating, and very smart essay on China and transgenic rice by Ron Herring, a professor of political science and political ecology at Cornell University.
Herring argues that Asia and Europe see genetically modified organisms in starkly different contexts. In Europe, messing around with DNA is often seen as a crime against nature -- or as plot by multinational corporations to make all farmers their vassals. Or both.
But it's different in Asia.