Indeed, Asians are also said to prize consensus over confrontation, and to emphasise the importance of education. Put together, these values are held to justify regimes which, to the West, look illiberal. Invoking Asian values, authoritarian governments are said only to be providing their people with what they want. While they delivered unprecedented economic success, the claim was taken seriously. Asians moved off the back foot, and on to the offensive.
European values are European values.
Any attempt to distil essential, but non-universal, beliefs across such a huge swathe of humanity is ambitious to say the least. And in practice, the debate has concentrated on East Asia, largely ignoring South Asia, except in negative comparisons sometimes drawn between India's rumbustious democracy and its relatively poor economic performance on the one hand, and the tough but successful systems to the east on the other. However, it was not in doubt that the region had produced many authoritarian regimes and, until last year, some fantastic rates of economic growth. But now some of the sins laid at the doors of the region's economic systems look suspiciously like Asian values gone wrong. The attachment to the family becomes nepotism.