Chapter 37 — Exercises

These exercises ask you to think at the highest altitude in the book — about civilizations, centuries, and your own quiet assumptions about who is "ahead." That makes them feel abstract, so each one pulls back down to something concrete and personal wherever it can. The real work here is catching the moment your mental map of "modern equals Western" reveals itself — and replacing nostalgia with accuracy. Work them with a pen.

Selected answers and sample responses appear in Appendix: Answers to Selected Exercises. Exercises marked with ✍️ feed directly into your Cultural Intelligence Portfolio.

Part A — Check Your Understanding

Short answers in your own words. If you can't answer one, reread the matching section before moving on.

1. In two sentences, explain the difference between "the East is rising" and "the West is falling." Why does conflating the two produce bad thinking?
2. The chapter argues Asia's rise is mostly a story of scale, not wealth. Restate that distinction and give the per-capita point that supports it.
3. Summarize Lee Kuan Yew's "Asian values" thesis fairly — in a way Lee himself would accept — in three sentences.
4. Now summarize Amartya Sen's two main objections to it. (Hint: one is about diversity; one is about the historical roots of liberty.)
5. What is the "flying geese" model, and what single point does the chapter use it to make about "the rise of Asia"?
6. Explain the claim that "'modern' is decoupling from 'Western.'" Give one real example of a society that is modern but not Western in its deep values.
7. The chapter says cultural humility has gone from "morally right" to also "strategically necessary." Explain what changed.

Part B — Check Your Assumptions

The hidden water of this chapter is the two-century habit of treating "Western" as a synonym for "advanced." For each statement below, decide whether it reflects an accurate reading of a multipolar world or a leftover assumption of Western default. Then write one sentence correcting or complicating it.

1. "If a country wants to truly modernize, it will eventually have to become more like the West — more individualist, more secular, more liberal."
2. "China's economy is now the biggest, so the average Chinese person is about as well off as the average American."
3. "When Asian leaders talk about 'Asian values,' they're describing a real, shared value system that unites the continent."
4. "Freedom and tolerance are essentially Western ideas that the West introduced to the rest of the world."
5. "The rise of Asia means the West is in decline."
6. "A Western teenager who loves K-pop and anime basically understands Korean and Japanese culture."

The point of this exercise is not that admiring Asia's rise is required and doubting it is forbidden. It is the opposite of cheerleading: each statement feels like an obvious takeaway and is in fact a distortion — usually because it flattens, or smuggles "falling" in beside "rising," or confuses scale with wealth. Noticing the slide is the skill.

Part C — Decode This

Each item is a real moment in the "rise of the East" conversation. Write what the speaker probably assumes, then a more accurate or complicating reading drawn from the chapter.

1. A Western executive returns from his first trip to Shenzhen and tells colleagues, with genuine shock, "It's like they're living in the future over there — we're behind."
2. An authoritarian Asian official, asked about jailed journalists, replies smoothly: "You in the West must understand, our culture values social harmony over your kind of individual freedom. This is the Asian way."
3. A Western newspaper runs the headline: "The Asian Century Has Arrived — Is the West Finished?"
4. A friend says, "Honestly, maybe the strongmen are right — look how fast their countries developed. Democracy is just too slow and messy to compete."

Part D — What Would You Do?

Real situations, each with several responses. There is no single "correct" answer — for each, pick the response closest to your instinct, then write why a culturally intelligent person might choose differently.

1. The deference that isn't coming. You're negotiating a partnership with a Chinese firm that is larger, better-capitalized, and more technologically advanced than yours. Out of old habit, you've been positioning your company as the experienced Western partner generously sharing know-how — and your counterparts seem politely unimpressed. Do you (a) push the "we bring world-class Western expertise" framing harder; (b) recalibrate and approach them as the senior or at least equal partner they actually are, leading with what you genuinely need from them; (c) get defensive and complain they don't respect experience; (d) assume the chill is just cultural reserve and ignore it? What does each signal, and which reflects the chapter's point about meeting the East as a peer?

2. The "Asian values" lunch. A senior counterpart in Singapore, over lunch, makes the full Lee Kuan Yew case to you — order before liberty, the West's individualism as decadence, democracy as a luxury his society can't afford. He seems to expect you to either cave or bristle. Do you (a) defend Western liberalism head-on and turn lunch into a debate; (b) nod along and agree to keep the peace; (c) acknowledge the real force of his argument and gently raise Sen's point about Asia's own traditions of liberty; (d) change the subject? What is each optimizing for — and which keeps both your integrity and the relationship?

3. The triumphalist headline. Your team is building a strategy deck, and a colleague wants to open with "The West is over — Asia has won" to grab attention. You think it's both inaccurate and likely to land badly with the very Asian partners who'll see the deck. Do you (a) let it go, it's just a slide; (b) replace it with a sober "multipolar" framing and explain why accuracy serves the strategy better; (c) flip it to a defensive "the West will reassert itself" line; (d) avoid the geopolitics entirely? Which choice reflects the chapter's "calm, accurate middle"?

Part E — Cultural Translation

The "Asian values" debate is, at bottom, about how to hold a strong claim without flattening it. For each blunt statement below, write a more accurate, non-flattening version — one that keeps whatever truth it contains while removing the essentializing error. (Model: turn "Asians are obedient" into "Several Asian cultures place a high value on social harmony and respect for hierarchy — though, like everywhere, with deep internal dissent and variation.")

1. "Asia is rising and the West is finished."
2. "Asian values are why those countries developed so fast."
3. "Eastern cultures don't really care about freedom the way we do."
4. "China proves you don't need democracy to succeed."

Part F — Reflection & Extension

1. Your own great divergence. The chapter notes that the West's dominance is a roughly two-century interruption of a much older pattern in which Asia held most of the world's output. Did you already know this — or did the familiar Western-centered world feel, on some level, timeless and natural to you? Write a page on how learning (or re-learning) the longer pattern changes the way "the rise of the East" feels: less like an alien new threat, more like a reversion. What does that reframing do to any anxiety the topic carries?
2. The honest synthesis. The chapter refuses to declare a winner in the Lee–Sen debate, insisting both halves are true at once ("culture shapes development and 'Asian values' is a flattening myth"). Some readers find this unsatisfying — a dodge. Write a page defending the both-and position as the more rigorous one, not the more cowardly one. Why is the ability to hold two true-but-tension-filled claims a sign of better thinking than picking a team?

✍️ Portfolio Builder. In your Cultural Intelligence Portfolio, add a section titled "Meeting My Culture as a Peer." For your chosen Eastern culture, answer: (1) In what specific ways is this culture's country/region ahead of or equal to the West today — in technology, infrastructure, a particular industry, a quality of life? Name at least two, concretely. (2) Where might I have been carrying an outdated "they're catching up to us" assumption into my dealings with people from this culture? (3) Write one sentence I could actually say, or one stance I could actually take, that treats them as the confident equal they are — without false modesty and without condescension. You'll return to this at the book's end; updating your "who's ahead" map is one of the quiet, high-value shifts this book exists to produce.