Democracy no more than Communism can survive in Asia on guns alone. There must be bread. Political stability can be built only on a base of economic progress and order, and the West must recognise that politically and economically the roads that lead to democracy need not be the same for Asia and Europe. The different circumstances in which Asia is achieving its Industrial Revolution call for different means, economically implying a larger degree of State direction and control than the West experienced or envisages. Politically nationalism having reached Asia a hundred years late, its forms of political democracy must differ and might be distinct. The difficulty is that though the forms of government are democratic in free Asia, their spirit is not always democratic and in some countries is becoming increasingly authoritarian.
The spirit surely is of primary urgency. In what form it is contained is of secondary importance, provided the form is true and authentic and worthy of the spirit it enshrines. We come back to where we started, the old problem of means and ends. In achieving and preserving the end which is democracy, Asia and Europe labour under a common misconception, believing that the same means must automatically lead to the same ends, which is not true; for different means, provided they are animated by the same high spirit and resolve, can equally lead to the same ends; while similar means, deployed in a conflicting spirit, will lead to different ends.
If democracy as a political system has not worked successfully in Asia, it is not because the principles of democracy are wrong but because the political system or institutions through which Asia works it are too close to the Western mould and unsuited to Asian conditions. Asia must be left to reshape and build a true Asian form of democracy, institutionally different from that of the West but in no way departing from the principles which commonly inspire it. For the principles are basic and universal; the forms or institutions are capable of infinite variety. In Asia the principles of democracy are best expressed economically and politically as democratic socialism.
Democracy is ensured economically when the instruments of economic power are so employed and controlled as to guarantee social justice, while politically democracy is safeguarded as long as political power rests in the people and in their representatives who also participate in the functions of government. The choice in Asia is not between Communism and democracy as America and the West understand it, but between Communism and a type of democracy, such as social democracy or democratic socialism, which is better suited or adapted to Asia's needs.