One pundit even expressed disappointment at academics who took talk of Asian values too seriously. Not everyone shared this view. Thomas Heberer, professor of East Asian politics at Gerhard-Mercator University in Duisburg, Germany, listed several traits which he described as being specifically attributable to Asian values. Heberer said this alternative paradigm to Western society preserved stability through insufficient integration stemming from social disparity. The Asian paradigm, he said, also helped maintain authoritarian structures and excluded parallel power structures.
Asian values are difficult to define because of the diversity of Asia.
Within the region there exist growing trends such as the rise of individualism, expanding market structures, successive waves of democratisation that have not lead to instability, increased awareness of human rights, the adoption of peaceful methods to resolve conflicts and the increasing role of NGOs in shaping democracy. Ashis Nandy, a leading pundit from India and senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, believes there is more than one version of Asian values. It's a real tragedy of our times that when Americans talk about American values they don't have to justify themselves. And by making the best use of them, Asian people might be successful in realising a social justice which takes a different form from Western ones. Nagai said many Japanese were beginning to realise that there was something more valuable than material wealth missing from their apparently prosperous country.