Values Change and Support for Democracy in East Asia

The Asian values thesis describes the cultural exceptionalism and alternative political development of East Asia. This study used four rounds of Asian Barometer Survey (ABS) datasets (spanning 2001–2016) to empirically examine the effects of Asian values on citizens’ support for democracy in four East Asian societies—mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—based on the theoretical distinction between the private and political spheres in which Asian values operate. The analysis produced three major findings. First, no remarkable gap exists between the citizens of China and those of other East Asian societies in terms of Asian values in the private sphere. However, Asian values in the political sphere are prevalent in China, while citizens in the other three societies have abandoned them. Second, supporting democracy is not incompatible with accepting the family and social ethics implied by Asian values, whereas Asian values in the political sphere have significantly negative associations with preference for democracy. Third, although most citizens in East Asia support democracy, the strongly positive evaluation of its suitability for local societies observed at the beginning of the twenty-first century has weakened in the region over the last 20 years.