Rebels and Mavericks: Social Change in Asia

Asia Society Hong Kong Center and Newsweek Panel Discussion with

Brook Larmer
Hong Kong Bureau Chief, Newsweek (Moderator)

Shanty Harmayn
Chair, Jakarta International Film Festival, Indonesia

Sheri Xiaoyi Liao
President, “Global Village of Beijing,” China

Christine Loh
CEO, Civic Exchange, Hong Kong SAR

Sam Rainsy
President, Sam Rainsy Party, Cambodia

Hong Kong, August 14, 2001

BROOK LARMER: As you know, this panel springs in part from our special issue that came out in July entitled “East Meets West”. It’s not really a new concept. The East has been meeting the West ever since the voyage of Marco Polo. It’s a meeting that has been at times confusing, exhilarating, conflictive, but the interaction is, above all, creative for it always marks the beginning of something new. We’re not just talking about McTeriyaki Burgers in Tokyo or Jackie Chan kicking it up in “Rush Hour 2”.

In everything from business to culture, people on both sides of the Pacific are borrowing, imitating and collaborating to such an extent that the lines between East and West are blurring. But, even defining the East itself is sometimes kind of confusing. How do we talk about Asia as a single concept? I mean, what does a Taliban warrior have in common with the Hong Kong tai-tai? There’s really nothing that binds all of Asia together. There’s not a single culture, religion, language or custom.

But in this special issue, and I hope on this panel, we will take as our starting point the fact that Asia, all of Asia, is opening up as never before, not just to the world but also to itself, to its own populations.

Looking at our distinguished group of panellists, it’s hard to see, at least at first glance, what binds them together. They have very different backgrounds, they work in different fields and they come from different parts of Asia. Indeed, none of these panellists had ever met until this morning. Yet, they share something vital. All of our panellists here have gone to study abroad, or to work abroad, to study something that at the time seemed impossible to implement back in their homelands.

When Rainsy went to Paris to study and get his Ph.D. in economics, there was not a glimmer of democracy in Cambodia. When Christine studied in England, the same could have been said about Hong Kong. When Shanty went to study film in the United States, there was no such thing as a film industry in Indonesia, and when Sheri went to study environmental activism and action in North Carolina, there was very little in the way of environmental activism in China.

But today all of our panellists are playing active, even groundbreaking, roles in pushing for social change in Asia in their respective countries and even for Christine in her respective system. They’re all doing it by going outside of the traditional government structures by developing something that could be considered something rather new in Asia-civil society.

So I guess you could say that our panellists are kind of a new breed of Asian mavericks, for just ten years ago none of them could have dreamed of doing what they’re doing today.

I will just introduce the panellists in the order in which they will then give their short presentations. We’re going to be relatively strict on time, so that we can have a discussion afterwards.

On my far right is Liao Xiaoyi, better known to people outside of China as Sheri Liao. Sheri is a trained philosopher who worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences but in 1993 she found herself as a visiting scholar at North Carolina State and working part-time as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. She was already deeply concerned about China’s environmental problems so she used the meagre savings from her waitressing job and financed a film about environmental activists, which became known as “Daughters of the Earth”. It showed in 1995 at the NGO Forum accompanying the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing. Sheri returned to China in 1995 and shortly thereafter, in early 1996, formed her own NGO called Global Village of Beijing.

She has since become a fixture on Chinese television on CCTV with her weekly show, “Time for Environment.” She has received a lot of attention from the outside world for her funding, which comes from the UNDP and the Ford Foundation along with many other organizations, as well as for winning the prestigious Sophie Award last year which is something like the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for environmentalists.

The government had largely ignored her until last year when the Beijing 2008 Olympic Bid Committee solicited her ideas for environmental programs and accepted, or at least promoted, all of them.

To my immediate left is Shanty Harmayn. She is a filmmaker in Indonesia. Back in 1992 she took a leap of faith as well by leaving her cushy job at Citibank - that’s what she said, “cushy job” - for a spot in the film school at Stanford University. Her friends of course thought she was crazy because there was no film industry in Indonesia at the time. Suharto still had a tight grip on power and freedom of expression was still a distant dream. But after her stint in the United States she came back, eventually Suharto fell, and the film industry became suddenly wide open. She produced her first film in those years and just recently completed her second film, which is premiering in Indonesia later this month.

Along the way she has played a key part in a new artistic movement in Indonesia and was one of the founders and directors of the Jakarta International Film Festival, which is now in its third year. It’s grown in size every year, and caused quite a big stir last year when it showed the Australian film, “The Year of Living Dangerously”.

On my immediate right is Sam Rainsy. As I said, a decade ago there was no such thing as an opposition or democracy in Cambodia. He was working as a businessman in France at the time, in fact. Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accord, he returned to Cambodia and was elected to Parliament and was eventually named the Finance Minister. But in 1994 he was summarily kicked out of government for finding fault with the Prime Minister.

Soon thereafter he decided to form his own political party, which was unprecedented in Cambodia, and he has ever since been the most persistent and almost all the time the loneliest critic of the government of Hun Sen. Trying to develop a grass roots political movement in Cambodia is no easy task. Rainsy himself in 1997 survived a grenade attack outside the National Parliament Building which left sixteen dead and I think more than one hundred wounded. But he has continued to push on, and continues to face dangers.

On my far left is somebody who I think our Hong Kong audience will know very well from past presentations-Christine Loh. She is a trained lawyer and was a commodities trader for many years but she also took a different path. She decided to abandon her successful career to devote her life to public service. She was appointed to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in 1992 and became an outspoken member of the pro-democracy camp.

But a year ago she took another road less travelled. She left Legco and decided to form her own public policy, non-profit think tank called Civic Exchange. Her group is trying to strengthen civic participation in public life and it’s pushing the Hong Kong Government, the Executive, to define its policy on a wide range of issues starting with the environment but also extending to racial discrimination and the rights of the disabled. She doesn’t rule out a return to politics but right now she’s enjoying this experiment in building Hong Kong’s civil society.

So I’ll leave it at that, but I’ll turn it over to our panellists and I will be relatively strict on the five minutes just so that we can have some time to discuss things after their talks. So I guess we should start. Sheri, if you could start us off, and then we will go to Shanty, then Sam and then Christine.

SHERI LIAO: Thank you, everyone. I am so honored to be here to share our experience with you and to learn something from you. I used to do research, as Brook said, at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. During my stay in the United States I met a lot of NGO people, not only Americans but also other NGO people. Some came from developing countries. So I thought my country, China, is so huge, such a big country but with so few NGOs so I decided to go back to China and establish the Global Village of Beijing, a non-profit, non-governmental organization in 1996.

Of course, the mission of my organization is really public awareness. I think we have three approaches. First of all, it’s an NGO approach meaning we do our best to deliver the message of an NGO. What is an NGO? What is an NGO’s function? Let the public know and let the government know and let the media know how important NGOs are for China.

Actually, if I just have only one mission, which would be promoting environmental protection, I could be a provisional host of China’s CCTV or a researcher for some institute, or even an official for the government. But I know how important NGOs are in China. So even if I face a lot of challenges and difficulties - for example, my organization may well die after three months because we are without continued funding. In China there is no tax reduction system so companies have no duty to support NGOs.

Of course, other NGOs, we have a group of NGOs in China, have even more difficulties. This is a common situation. But I think we will never give up because China needs NGOs. Also we try to develop partnerships with non-government organizations and with the private sector, and we have had some success. Maybe later we can talk a little bit more about this.

The second approach is a media approach. We have produced a TV program on China Central Television for the last five years. Every week we independently produce a 10-minute environmental program. I think an information society is a very powerful tool.

Our third approach - and I think most important - is a community approach. In the past five years our main activity has been to promote green community development in China. So there are a lot of ways - we produce and distribute tapes, some guidebooks, a green community guidebook, children’s guide book, even some environmental songs. We have also used the coming Olympic Games in Beijing to initiate a green project. We have 800,000 children, elementary children, in Beijing who have signed a ‘green commitment’ with their parents.

Anyway, I think that China has a lot of potential among the public to be involved in environmental protection. Social change in China I think is already making a big difference. So I hope I can use this opportunity to share our experience with you. I also appreciate your attention, thank you.

BROOK LARMER: Thank you, Sheri. Shanty?

SHANTY HARMAYN: For the longest time there was a constant and endless debate about who is responsible for the demise of Indonesian cinema in the late 80s. I would like to quote from a friend of mine who wrote that: “The growth of Indonesian cinema was once driven by film makers’ egocentricism dictated by producers who sell films by following the principle of textile commerce, and not to mention the lesson from the government who thinks it knows everything about the world.”

Indonesian cinema has gone through an impossible death for more than a decade because each actor in the field was so certain about their own standing, whether as an oppressive government institution, or powerful cinema owners, or as victimized artists. But this continuing standoff was basically the reason for a standoff because they couldn’t foresee that the system was not working at all and nobody wanted to initiate change in this case.

The result was the decline of Indonesian cinema from producing 100 titles per year to only producing, let’s say, one or two titles every three years - it’s quite sad.

The government’s policy towards Indonesian cinema was clearly not supportive of the growth of the sector. We used to have this Department of Information who basically created all these rules and laws and regulations. But it was more into showing off its power to suppress freedom of expression rather than supporting or creating film making opportunities.

For example, the law requires each film production to submit story lines - every single story lines we have to submit - to a desk at the Ministry, who will then be issued a permit stating whether or not we can make the film. For many years these types of rules, laws and regulations merely produced layers of bureaucracy, nurtured corrupt practices, and misuse of funds that was supposed to be provided for the emerging filmmakers and, sadly also created film unions for film professionals with such a bureaucratic mindset that they set up all these professional requirements and standardization that is completely incompatible with the situation.

A ridiculous example would be a regulation stating that one can be a film director after serving as an assistant director in three other films. It means nobody can be a film director because we’re only producing one title every three years, and how can one work in three projects prior to that?

So this clearly confirms that the government and other participants in this field were lacking in knowledge or understanding of the problem or the nature or even the importance of this form of media.

So the question is, must change come from outside the system? In this case, unfortunately, yes.

So I would like to share with you two major important events that sort of have started the movement towards change in Indonesian cinema. The first important event was in 1996 when a group of young filmmakers and film students got together and they made a film called “Cul de Sac”. From a production point of view the film was a breakthrough. All cast and crew worked for free, the equipment was donated by the equipment companies. We just had to juggle schedules, like when they called, ‘Oh, it’s not being used’, we have to run there and shoot the next day. The film was shot underground with no permits so we basically broke every single rule and law.

It took two years to finish the film. Even then we didn’t know whether we could release the film commercially. But then history was on our side. In 1998 the Suharto regime fell and in the spirit of freedom of expression the film was finally released at the end of that year.

We inherited the name “new kids on the block.” According to the film critic Seno Gumera, we had “implemented a modus called cinema gorilla that possessed an independent stand in film making, independency in economy, ideas, organization, and even production systems.”

The second important event was the film festival which was launched in 1998. It created a lot of reaction like “Are you mad?” “How are you going to deal with censorship?” And we have to basically borrow 100 films and how are we going to do all that? But it was quite successful. We were very surprised at the turnout and managed to basically have about 20,000 spectators.

So one more thing that I would like to basically underline here is that these two events, basically in the end, managed to create a culture, an independent society, which had never been seen before. It took guts and basically the desire to change things, and not thinking whether we were going to succeed or not but rather just doing it.

BROOK LARMER: Thank you, Shanty. Sam?

SAM RAINSY: Like many young men at that time, I left Cambodia at the age of 16 in 1965 to go to study in France. I thought that I would return to Cambodia after the end of my study but many things happened. In 1970 Prince Norodom Sihanouk was toppled by a coup d’etat and Cambodia was dragged into the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge took power. The “Killing Fields”. Then Vietnam invaded Cambodia and occupied Cambodia.

In the meantime, I completed my studies. I started a career in the banking sector. I was a fund manager. I led, I would say, a comfortable life in France, in Paris. But I was not happy because I continuously thought of my country. My country was going down the drain. How can I be happy? Life had no meaning.

Then there was a historic opportunity for me to return. Following the signing of the Paris Peace Accord in 1991 the United Nations decided to intervene. It was the first ever peacekeeping operation by the United Nations and they organized the first ever democratic election. So I decided to return after having spent nearly 30 years in France. I was with the Royalist Party because the Royalist were the only alternative to the Communist. I won a Parliamentary seat and I was appointed Finance Minister.

But soon I had a clash of culture because in that coalition government, even though the Royalists won we were forced to make a coalition with the Communists. Many of the Royalists had to compromise with the Communists and to give up their original principle because of a clash of culture. Having lived 30 years in the West I could not accept the power of the gun, the power of the money. I asked myself, where is the power of the brain? Where is the power of the law? If we have to bow to the gun again, life does not have any meaning.

So when I was Finance Minister, the Prime Minister - actually there were two Prime Ministers, co-Prime Ministers, Mr. Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh - I managed to get the first budget law adopted by the National Assembly and attempt to bring some rule of law, and transparency to Cambodia. But suddenly the two Prime Ministers decided to allow the army to cut the forests - the forests are our main resources - and to allow the army to sell wood to collect money and to use the money as they pleased. Then I organized a press conference and I said, “I’m sorry, as Finance Minister, I cannot support these measures. I condemn these measures.” Not surprisingly, I was fired from the Government.

But never mind. More surprisingly, I was also expelled from the National Assembly. So this is, I think, contrary to democratic principles so I had nowhere to go: out of government, out of the National Assembly and even expelled from my own political party. I was a founding member of the Royalist Party, yet nowhere to go. So I decided to establish my own party, a true opposition party.

It was the first ever opposition party in Cambodia. In Cambodia before, when you are not happy with the authority, you just take up arms and go to the jungle and fight. But that time, being educated to fight with the brain rather than with weapons, I founded this opposition party. It is not that easy but I think it is worth doing it. I started everything: leading the first demonstration, workers’ demonstration; helping workers to organize the first strike; leading farmers to organize their first protest against land graft, etc.

So, it is very challenging, even though it is dangerous. I escaped not only one but several assassinations attempts. I saw a lot of blood around me. I’m not scared, I’m not concerned for my own security, but I’m very concerned for the security of those who dare to stand up and to fight for their values.

I believe, to conclude, even though I have been accused of being a “westerner”, western education, etc., I believe that there are universal norms of justice, universal norms of human rights, and in the economic field also universal norms of efficiency. If you cannot meet those norms you will fail. So I want to help bring universal norm of human rights and universal norm of efficiency to Cambodia. Thank you.

BROOK LARMER: Thank you, Mr. Rainsy. Christine?

CHRISTINE LOH: If I can tell a little personal story. I grew up in Hong Kong in a very cushy environment where politics was just not discussed. In fact, it just wasn’t discussed, it wasn’t around, it wasn’t seen. I was born in 1956 so for those of you who do the quick subtraction I’m 45. So really, I would say for the first 15 years of my life, and for those of you who are of a similar age to me, just ask yourself, at that time what was politics in Hong Kong? It was a complete blank.

My life today is also defined by China. China as I was growing up was a civilization, it was a culture, it was not a country. Today China is our country. What defines me and China today is to think about what is Hong Kong’s role in China? What is the challenge of “one country”?

The other thing that defines me is my personal background. I’m the only member of my family who is a Chinese national. Everybody else in my immediate family, as well as extended family, is now holding a foreign passport. My father’s family came from Shanghai. He is now an American citizen, retired in Los Angeles. My parents were divorced. My mother married a Danish gentleman. She is now a Danish national and they’re about to move from London to go and live in Canada. I have two brothers from my father’s second marriage, who are ABCs. They have problems speaking Chinese. They’re big, strapping American boys.

My mother after her second marriage to my Danish father, they have one daughter who is Eurasian, brought up in Hong Kong. My grandmother and my uncles and aunties, most of them are Canadians. Some of them are Australians, and they’re spread out all over the world.

The common language at home has become English for me and various bits of my family. I used to be a British national. I was not a Danish national because my parents forgot to adopt me formally. They got very worried as 1997 approached, but it’s okay, I had a British passport because I went to school in England. But in 1998, because I was going to run in the SAR’s first election, I had to be a Chinese national. I actually went to the British Consulate to ask them if they had a form that I could fill out to renounce my British nationality and the officer said, “Oh, nobody’s done that before” and two days later he found a form- that was rather crumpled up- and sent it to me. So I actually went through a process of renouncing British citizenship and now I travel on a SAR passport. I have no intentions of changing my passport.

So I’m a Chinese national living in Hong Kong and thinking about politics here, where we have the freedom to speak. We’ve always had the freedom to speak but I find Hong Kong has very little to say. We have very little to say because we haven’t been practising how to think about the issues of the day.

Growing up in Hong Kong we were not encouraged to think about wider issues. We were not encouraged to think about social issues and political issues. We didn’t talk about China. It was only in the 1980s that we started talking about our future.

In the middle of the 1990s we had what I would call Hong Kong’s first golden age in politics where there was a lot of discussion about politics. I’m waiting for the second golden age. But I think it will only come if Hong Kong people make more effort. There’s no point just complaining about what the Government cannot do. That’s one thing I’ve come to realize, there are many things they cannot do, even if they are very good governments, very effective governments.

So how is it that we can wind ourselves up as members of a civil society to complement what government can and cannot do to build the capacity to collaborate with others? I think one of the problems with traditional Chinese society is we don’t know how to collaborate. Hong Kong is a very small place. We all know everybody but we don’t know how to work together.

We need to learn to think about public policies. What are the solutions for communities, complex issues, actively build that capacity so that when the time comes and we have our second golden age in politics, that actually ordinary people will be ready.

BROOK LARMER: Well, thank you, Christine. Very interesting food for thought, I think, in each of the four panellists’ remarks.

I will just start off. We will have a little bit of a discussion among the five of us up here and then we’ll open it up for questions.

Christine mentioned very succinctly the challenges of civil society. I just would like to open this up to the other panellists. Civil society is a rather new concept in Asia and this is a region where both the family and the state have always been traditionally very strong and people have seemed to rely on either the family or the state to answer many of their needs. But I think all over Asia both of those institutions are weakening and depending on which place you talk about they’re weakening gradually or much more quickly. It seems like with that weakening, the space for civil society has also grown.

But I guess the question I would ask, and I can ask this also to Sheri, is the very notion of working outside the system an alien concept or a western concept, or is it a natural outgrowth as Asia or China develops and modernizes?

SHERI LIAO: I beg your pardon?

BROOK LARMER: Well, is working outside the system something of a western concept? For someone in China is it a natural thing for Chinese to consider how you’re working as an NGO, to understand what working outside of the traditional government system means?

SHERI LIAO: Yes. I think the concept of an NGO is definitely a western notion. It’s difficult for NGOs to survive inside China’s society. For example, my organization, I got the NGO concept from outside the country. Mr Liang Congjie, the head of another organization, “Friends of Nature,” which you may have heard of - he has very wide contacts outside the country as well. But the problem is now that we have a double goal - one is to promote democracy, another one is to promote sustainable development. For example, consumerism is destroying the Chinese environment.

Also, I think as a result of China’s economic reform, both NGOs and civil society are taking root. You can say NGOs are growing and the community are playing a more active role. And even the media in China now have more freedom. I think it’s a result of China’s economic reform because the Government already has transferred some profit functions to companies. They have been transferring some non-profit functions to the non-profit sector. So I think China is undergoing a very big social change. China has made very important social improvement.

We shouldn’t use an old map when thinking about China. For example, at my organization we work in three areas: NGO, community and media. I think that these are the main elements of a civil society. My understanding of a civil society doesn’t just mean NGO development, but the community is so very important. Later maybe, if I have time, I can talk about community development in China, and also the media. Of course, some people may think China’s media is just the voice of the Government, but the situation has changed in the past years. The Chinese media is becoming more and more free and independent, by my understanding. We could not have imaged that this would happen 10 or 20 years ago.

BROOK LARMER: But is there any danger when each of you has had extensive contact with the West, you’ve been educated there, a lot of your funding comes from the West, some of the ideas of the models that you’re implementing come from the West. I’m not saying that a lot of the problems don’t come from West, including consumerism and such, but is there any danger that you would not have credibility with your local constituents? I mean, both Sam Rainsy and Christine mentioned about how much of a kind of a foreign -- sometimes being called an outsider, I mean, is there a danger that you will lose credibility among your own population?

CHRISTINE LOH: From a Hong Kong perspective, it’s probably a little easier for me. When I first went into formal politics in 1999 my spoken Cantonese was not very good. A lot of jokes were lumped on me about how bad my Chinese was. But what people didn’t realize was that my Putonghua was very good because in 1979 I actually spent a year full-time learning to speak Putonghua. But I think we have it easy in Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is relatively open. People are used to people with experiences elsewhere.

Indeed, one of the things that I used to say as well, I can improve my Chinese and today I can actually give an entire speech in Cantonese. It’s probably the single thing that I’m most proud of. Most people don’t know but I had my entire education in English and therefore actually for me learning about China, learning about the Chinese language, Chinese culture, that is such a big thing.

Actually, it’s another very strange thing, I’m kind of more interested in China than a lot of Hong Kong people so I think the credibility thing, I think you can get past that by showing people substance. Maybe you can’t speak the language well, you can do better. Lee Kuan Yew did a really good job when he was young. I mean, there are a whole range of people that we can show through history in Asia that the language and the culture, the fact that we’ve been infected from the outside doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of the world for political life.

BROOK LARMER: Shanty, you were mentioning earlier when we were speaking about the fact that people that went abroad and came back to Indonesia, those that did not have deep roots in their society had a lot of problems.

SHANTY HARMAYN: Well, basically, I have to agree with Christine, especially in my field where film is totally a western product. It’s seen as commercial, as very western. But the good thing about this movement, this new generation of filmmakers, most of them were educated abroad but they have this deep-rooted concern about our country. I mean, these are filmmakers who’ve done documentaries, who have travelled throughout Indonesia and basically have gone really grass roots in meeting indigenous people. Therefore they understand completely what needs to be conveyed. So the answer is like ‘yes’ and ‘no’, of course we adopt a western model, but again we know how to disagree with and implement it.

BROOK LARMER: But you were saying a lot of the filmmakers there have a similar experience as you had having gone abroad and then come back.

SHANTY HARMAYN: Yes.

BROOK LARMER: I was wondering, Sam Rainsy, we were talking about civil society, or at least social change and the whole theme of this panel, is whether it is more effective to initiate social change from inside or from the outside the system? You’ve spent some time in both places.

I remember when we spoke in Phnom Penh you considered yourself, sardonically I guess, as the democratic alibi of Cambodia, the fig leaf of democracy, that may provide some cover, if not enough cover, for a government that has some authoritarian tendencies. Do you mean that you feel like there’s a danger that you are only serving the purpose of the people inside? Or how do you think you can really effectively create change?

SAM RAINSY: I’m fully aware that they try to use me as a democratic alibi. They said that Sam Rainsy can speak freely, he can even come to Hong Kong. Therefore Cambodia is a democratic country. I think it is a little bit simplistic. Cambodia is actually a banana kingdom with a Mafia state. There are democratic institutions but only on the surface. If you scratch a little bit, the ruling party still has an iron grip on the country. So they are using me. They try to use me and take advantage of me.

But I am using them also. I get advantage from them also because I am a Member of Parliament; I am supposed to have some parliamentary immunity. They cannot arrest me. So therefore I use this parliamentary immunity to organize demonstrations, to organize strikes.

Now what I am doing is to help people get registered because we are in the run-up for the first ever commune election to elect local government. Up to now local government has been appointed by the ruling party, Communist style. But under the pressure of the international community and donor countries, they have been forced to decentralize and to have elected local leaders. So I am seizing this opportunity in an attempt to undermine the very foundation of the communist system.

What they are doing now, they allow only their supporters to register so it is a selective registration process so I am fighting this. I have to rush in a few minutes back to Phnom Penh in order to allow the other people who do not support the communists, and they represent the vast majority of the population, to be able to register which is a sine qua non position to be able to vote. Even though there is intimidation, even though there is cheating, but there are so many votes in favour of the non-communist forces that whatever amount they vote, they achieve, there are still many remaining.

When I was expelled from the Parliament I was alone and the following election I have 15 Members of Parliament. This time, next election, I hope to have the majority.

BROOK LARMER: Christine, your departure from Legco was seen by many as a hiatus from which you will return to engage in political elections. I was wondering, did you feel that now during this period in which you find yourself kind of outside the traditional system that you can actually effect change, or is this more of a time just to recharge your batteries?

CHRISTINE LOH: Well, I was listening to what Sam was saying and he used the word “undermine”. From what I understand if there was a way of undermining this system that is in existence so that it would break down so that the phoenix could rise from the ashes, that’s a very compelling story. In Hong Kong I think our fear is undermining the system too much. The cards are going to tumble down and this isn’t necessarily going to be good for everybody.

The reason I left the legislature is that I thought that the next three years-yes, one year has already gone by, time goes very quickly-but I thought a four-year term would be incredibly dull. There would not much happening in the legislature.

But parliaments work by sitting. You sit, you talk, you debate and there may be very little result, and I didn’t think that I wanted to spend the next four years of my life sitting. What I wanted to do was to see if I wasn’t sitting, if I would have more time to do other things, and whether I could use that time to generate the capacity that I was talking about for Hong Kong people to understand that they could be much more influential.

One of the things that I wanted to say is I was shocked to find out in my nine years in politics how very educated people, people like members of our audience, people who are very influential in business, people who really are VIPs in this town, that basically they did not understand politics. They did not understand civics. They did not know that if they want to affect the system what they must do. And their fear was that, ‘Well, these democrats or these people who run elections, they’re going to end up persuading the great unwashed.’ The media would be telling all these stories that were untrue and Hong Kong would be undermined. I would think that, well, but surely you would know how to use the system, you would know how to put your views across. People had no idea.

So one of the things was whether you are representing different interests, different groups in Hong Kong. One of the things that we really need to do in Hong Kong is understand the civic tools and to be able to use them. I think once we have those tools we’ll be in a much better position to think about undermining the system. This is probably not the time to do it in Hong Kong.

BROOK LARMER: I guess with three of our panellists being women it’s worth bringing up the question about whether women have a particularly powerful role in catalyzing or in energizing civil society….any branches or business communities that women can have more of an impact in NGOs or civil society?

CHRISTINE LOH: The answer has to be no. The answer has to be no. Now, just why the guys are not doing more, I don’t know. There’s no reason for them not to be doing more. There’s no reason for them not to -- I mean, for the years of privilege that men have had, where are they?

BROOK LARMER: Sheri, what do you find in Beijing in terms of the small NGO community, the Chinese NGO community? Do you feel that as a woman it’s easier for you to have an impact from the outside in the NGOs?

SHERI LIAO: Yes, maybe. My organization is a kind of a women’s organization. Almost everyone is female. And within the community, a lot of women support our project.

BROOK LARMER: Shanty, you were telling me also about the circle of filmmakers.

SHANTY HARMAYN: I don’t know whether this is a coincidence or accidental or whatever, but the main producers in the film industry are all women and basically right now the project that I’ve just completed, the feature film we just completed, the producers are all women, the director is a woman, the script writers are women, and the main cast are women so it’s definitely a chick movie, as they say, a chick-flick.

But I guess answering the question would be probably, in Indonesia, I mean, we’re not expected, there’s no, how do you say it, excess baggage. We don’t think that we have something to prove and therefore it’s easier for us to do what we love to do and what we have to do. There’s no expectations because expectations are burdens that are placed more on men-basically you have to do this, this and this, and therefore women are more free.

BROOK LARMER: I remember talking to Sam Rainsy’s wife, Samura, in Phnom Penh. She herself is a Member of Parliament and she was talking about the activism in the field. Cambodia, of course, is not very safe for many activists from the opposition party, and she was talking about how it was easier for women to fly below the radar, that the police wouldn’t naturally pick up a group of women standing on a street corner handing out leaflets, whereas if it were a group of men it might be different.

SAM RAINSY: We have suffered a lot of casualties. Dozens of our activists have been killed over the last few years. But the widows continue the role, the work of their husbands, and most of them are standing for the next election. It is a little bit cowardly on our part. But when it is difficult work that men cannot do we send the women, because the soldiers, the policeman, they hesitate before arresting or hitting a women. And women, when they go to the market, they can put leaflets in their bag, pretending to go and buy things at the market while actually distributing leaflets.

MARY LEE TURNER: This is the time in the program that we’re going to open the floor to your questions. So we’ll dispatch the microphones and we will try our best to balance the questions between men and women.

QUESTION: This question is addressed to all four of you, because you’re all in different stages, but knowing what you know now, would you have pushed for more democracy in your country?

SHANTY HARMAYN: Knowing the changes now?

QUESTION: Yes.

SHANTY HARMAYN: Everything that has happened, especially in my field, was somewhat parallel with the change. I mean, what I was saying before, we started in 1996 when things started to go wrong. But, no, I mean, we grew up being so apolitical. We did not know what is the real meaning of democracy. We didn’t even know how to participate in a political interaction. So when it all happened to us it was sort of like, you know, a bottle full of champagne popped out and everybody is talking and participating. But then, when it happened, we don’t know how to start or how to act so everything is a bit chaotic. That’s why it has been chaotic for the past four years. Nobody knows the rules and regulations. Everybody is just expressing what they think.

Let’s say, for instance, in the film, the Department of Information has been abolished, which is a very good decision by the government. But the laws still exist and the Censorship Board, which is supposed to be under the Department of Information, still exists. So where do we go? When we go to the Censorship to ask for a censor, we said, well, you cannot do this because there’s no more Department of Information. Then they will say but the law still exists although there is no official body implementing it.

So there are a lot of grey areas that we need to basically clarify and therefore as well as being a filmmaker we also have to basically do work in pushing towards amendments to laws. We would like to be just filmmakers but we also have to go to hearings of the DPR and the MPR. Our industry is not actually a priority compared to all the economic and political problems but it’s so integrated that we have to do it.

SHERI LIAO: I think that civil society, when we talk about civil society, we have to talk about the sustainable society. In this century, unlike last century, the environment was not a number one issue. But I think during this century sustainable development, sustainable society is everybody’s concern. So we should combine together democratic improvement with the environmental movement.

I can tell you a little bit about how we combine the two of them. We say our mission is public awareness-for the public to be aware of what? Not “aware” of just environmental issues, but also aware of their rights and their responsibilities concerning environmental quality, monitoring enforcement of environmental law, participate in the policy making process, and choosing an environmentally friendly lifestyle. So when we organize public hearings in the community the people know their rights.

Anyway, if we just focus on democratic society, if everybody just uses democracy and freedoms to destroy the earth, to over-consume-after all there is a limit to the earth’s resources-what will happen then?

I think in this century we have to think, we cannot deliberately just focus on a democratic society and ignore a sustainable society which is fundamentally important for human beings.

QUESTION: We have acquired the spirit in our guest speakers who come from governments that oppress and suppress freedoms but we in Hong Kong need to think about what we can do to maintain the freedoms that we already have. However, the education system we have here has cultivated compliant citizens who make good workers but we need to think about what can be done in education to begin to cultivate more innovative and independent thinkers.

MARY LEE TURNER: Is the question that you’re looking for agreement with that question or is that just a statement?

QUESTION: It’s a question about what you think, what you think we can be doing differently in education to cultivate independent thinkers.

CHRISTINE LOH: That’s a very big question, about how to make those of us who’ve been educated in a traditional Asian education system break out of some bad habits. I was just talking to a teacher the other day and they’ve been interviewing students in primary school and secondary school, and also actually at university level. What they found was that the most creative ones were those in primary school. There kids were still willing to speak out, to voice their concern, and she said she was surprised by how practical the kids were.

But by the time they get to university, somehow, road-blocks have been put in their way. So I think what we are doing in Hong Kong is thinking desperately about how to remove some of those blockages. I don’t want to go on about education, but some of the things that I think we clearly need to do is reduce the curriculum, make sure that children work more on a project basis, that exams become less of an emphasis. All these things are being discussed today but I think that’s probably a program for another panel.

SAM RAINSY: Could I look at education from another perspective? The question is whether we should work from within the system or outside the system in order to improve society. In my view, it depends on the level of education of the leaders first. If you have an enlightened despotism, like in China now, like in Japan in the last century, or like Lee Kuan-yew in Singapore, you can do something, because they are educated. And people who are educated understand the importance of education.

Even in Indonesia, I remember that when they talked about the educated people in the 60s, the leaders were called the “Berkley Mafia.” But in Cambodia we don’t have the Berkley Mafia. We have only the Mafia.

It is very important to notice that when you have educated leaders they tend to improve the level of education, and with the improvement of the level of education, I think the situation is more favorable for democracy. In Cambodia the people who vote for the opposition are the most educated segment of the population. So it is in the interests of the democrats to push for education. While I was Finance Minister I was shocked because the budget for the defence, for the army, was half of the national budget and education received less than 20 per cent. It was ridiculous but this reflected the priorities of the government. They want to strengthen the army, not to defend the country but to have the army crack down on dissidents. But I try to reverse, to diminish the budget allocated to the army and to raise the budget allocated to education. Then they can find better jobs. People who think a little bit, who receive a better education, I think, they will become more democratic.

QUESTION: I think you all represent important forces for change across Asia-forces of modernization, really. A couple of years ago it seemed like there was a real groundswell across the region of people demanding reform and change, and people talking lots about the rule of law and democracy and the need for more transparency. But in recent months, particularly with the economic downturn across the region, it seems that more conservative voices have become louder and that there’s less talk about the kinds of reform and the kinds of changes that you’re talking about. I was just wondering if you feel that you’re part of a tiny minority, that there’s a danger that your voices or that people like yourselves will be drown out by the forces of conservatism or do you feel optimistic that you and your generation will prevail?

CHRISTINE LOH: What I do know is that there are many people like us. What we need to do is to create different types of platforms, different types of activities for the different folks to try and experience participation. Participation, civic participation, is really a personal experience. It isn’t something that you read about in books or newspapers. I think until people have tried something, that they’ve engaged themselves in some activities, some issue, be it the environment, be it the education of their children, be it public transport, they don’t get that sense, they don’t feel that empowerment that they can do something. So what I’m interested in is providing those examples, those platforms, those opportunities-however small they may be-that will just give more opportunities to people, and particularly people in Hong Kong who are so well informed, who have so many resources, who in many ways are so knowledgeable-and that is, I think, what Hong Kong is per se, a chance for that experience.

SHANTY HARMAYN: That is a very good question pertaining to Indonesia actually. We’ve gone so far in basically putting people like ourselves in positions within the government. After 1998, the media is full with people talking, there are so many NGOs. It’s unbelievable, even in film, where NGOs did not previously exist, we now have more than four NGOs.

Thus the question should not be whether or not they are drowning out our voice but rather whether or not we have been talking so much that we’re now afraid that we’re becoming the system, the “establishment,” that we need to basically be aware of our independency, and basically not take positions in the government because the government is so still right now.

SHERI LIAO: My organization gets great support from the public and the media and we have a media network which is around 300 regular - not members - but networking. And when we do some environmental training programs for journalists, everybody applies to attend. They stay in the room from 9 o’clock until 6 o’clock. Many people are surprised. Whatever we do, the media always follows us. My organization, when we launch some projects at least 15 media will report it. And we even get support from the government, especially the local government.

When I met Beijing’s Mayor, Liu Qi, he invited me to his office to talk about environmental protection. I provided three suggestions. One is the development of a green community and I provided a proposal to him. Then he organized a city-wide conference. I was one of three keynote speakers at the conference. After that the green community development became a city-wide practice. Wherever we go in the community we also hear some similar words as what we have said, exactly the same. So I’m so delighted that our concept, our work is being accepted by the government and that they have developed the green community according to our experience.

So I think in China the environmental issues is being taken more serious but I think the most important thing right now is how to establish a partnership between governments and the private sector and the non-government organizations to foster a civil society.

MARY LEE TURNER: I think we will have to stop there. First of all, I’d like to thank Brook and I’d like to thank all of the panellists. It’s clear, I think, from the discussion that there is social change, there is coalition building going on both within their individual communities but also across Asian communities and it’s very exciting to have this panel here and to be part of the discussion. So thank you very much for joining us.