Naked truth: it's Asian values or bust

Two nude scenes in Titanic, featuring Ms Winslet, have been censored from the version of the film shown in Singapore, the nation-state where Lee Kuan Yew and other leaders first advanced the notion that restrictive Asian political traditions represented a legitimate alternative to Western political theories and were better suited to Asian cultures and values.

The people of Singapore are flocking to Titanic, despite the censorship on Ms Winslet, which the last issue of InSingapore magazine called "Titantic". Singaporeans planning visits to Sydney and Perth are including a viewing of the uncut version in their schedules. Young Singaporeans are buying T-shirts showing a clothed Ms Winslet with a clothed Leonardo DiCaprio. Photographs of the couple are in shops everywhere.

There is no suggestion, as there has been in South Korea, that people boycott Titanic because revenue from the film goes to the United States, which is said to be behind hostile moves by the International Monetary Fund against Asian economies.

Nonetheless, the matter of Ms Winslet's breasts has helped widen the debate over so-called Asian values. InSingapore, in a short satirical piece, suggested the IMF and the World Bank could raise funds to rescue the Indonesian economy by selling uncensored pictures of DiCaprio and Winslet.

The censorship question puts the two actors, indirectly, in the same debating ring as Malaysia's Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad - "too much democracy leads to homosexuality, moral decay, racial intolerance, economic decline, single-parent families and a lax work ethic" - and the Singaporean patriarch Mr Lee - "I do not believe democracy leads to development. Rather, I think a country has greater need of discipline than democracy."

The discipline here is evident in the drive from the airport - in the ordered rows of flowering bougainvillea which make it one of the most attractive airport drives in the world - and at the cinema, where much of the attractive Ms Winslet is missing. Singapore is a comfortable, well-run society with a blanket over it. "We are the most boring safe place," said Philip Yeo, chairman of the Economic Development Board.

Few people talk about politics, even old politics. A guide at the National Museum passes quickly by an exhibition of the Japanese occupation. A guide at the Art Museum passes equally quickly by a painting depicting civil freedoms, or the lack of them. The leader of the opposition Workers' Party, Joshua Jeyaretnam, said of the newly ordered ban on political videos: "Politics has become a dirty word in Singapore."

Linda Lim, of the University of Michigan, said Asian intellectuals had argued that Asian values - emphasising the primacy of order over freedom, family and community interests over individual choice, and economic progress over political expression, together with thrift, ambition and hard work - were largely responsible for the "Asian miracle".

In a paper presented at the Harvard Business School, Ms Lim said the Asian-values school of thought was unpopular among many Western commentators for suggesting, among other things, that capitalism and democracy need not go hand-in-hand.

When severe economic troubles hit Asian countries while the US and most Western countries were enjoying relatively good times, it was predictable that opponents of the Asian-values school would crow over its assumed demise.

Ms Lim said, however, that another interpretation was taking hold in affected Asian countries - that the Western model of free markets with democracy has failed with the collapse of its prime success stories in Asia.

She pointed out that Thailand, which has had five democratically elected governments in six years, was vulnerable to vested business interests and had suffered considerably through the present crisis. Hong Kong, which did not have an elected government, and Singapore, which had a parliament dominated by a single party, had been hurt much less. "In the terminology of political scientists," Ms Lim said, "both states possess an autonomy from business interests that governments in their newly democratic neighbours do not have."

She argued that both the open Western model and the statist Eastern model had, in some sense, failed.

Market openness without the required institutional infrastructure brought economic disaster, while statist industrial policy brought crony capitalism, excess capacity and bad investments.

John Wong, research director of the East Asian Institute at Singapore University, said the Confucian values of thrift and hard work, respect for education and social harmony, were credited in the 1980s with East Asia's industrial success.

Mr Wong said, however, that this attitude reflected the credit given to the Protestant work ethic for the rise of Western capitalism. What's more, the theory was discredited by the economic take-off of Buddhist Thailand and Islamic Malaysia. "Successful economic development has taken place under virtually all sorts of political regimes," Mr Wong wrote in the government-controlled Straits Times. "Regimes that include Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, prewar Japan under a military dictatorship.

"Specifically for East Asia, economic take-off occurred under highly divergent political systems. Hong Kong was a British colony with no democracy whatsoever. China was and is still manifestly a socialist country ruled by a Communist Party. South Korea and Taiwan launched their industrialisation programs under martial law."

Nonetheless, some Singaporean leaders are concerned by the public perception of the blanket over Singapore.

The Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, and the Information and Arts Minister, George Yeo, the main exponent of Asian values, are trying to add cultural touches to their city-state. Schools are trying to encourage children to be more creative and less dependent on rote learning.

Mr Lee, the Senior Minister whose approval is probably still required for all major strategic decisions, returned from Hong Kong last year saying Singapore lacked that territory's "buzz".

Many filmgoers here think one way to add buzz would be to restore Ms Winslet's breasts to their screens.