There is surprisingly little comment let alone smugness or satisfaction in Asia about the fate of Enron et al in America. Unlike in Europe where there have been vocal denunciations of American accounting and business culture, Asia has been very quiet.

A few wry quips over dinner are heard but not in public. A favorite, from a Chinese official representing five thousand years of history, culture and statecraft, is repeated with some relish: "Does America feel it is ready for world leadership?"

Partly the public silence is because the United States has been the chosen model for at least a generation for many countries and families who have absorbed the norms that came with their children's US-earned MBAs and their leaders' stints at the Kennedy School. The thought that the systems may be flawed is troubling, not a cause for rejoicing or condemnation: time for quiet contemplation.

More generally, though, there is a sense that people in glass houses should not throw stones. Much of Asia is still picking itself out of the rubble from the Asian Crisis of 1997. Many societies are rebuilding or in many cases building for the first time the institutions that can prevent future collapses.

Asians take no satisfaction from the thought that their own versions of Enron, WorldCom and all the rest could hit them if they don't get it right. Having seen enough stock-market scams and financial fraud of their own, most Asians are not complacent.

Instead, the need for improved corporate governance and better accounting standards is the mantra of the authorities not only in such supposed safe havens as Hong Kong and Singapore but in areas of real abuse like China where the dismantling of the Soviet economy by the oligarchs has been a lesson in what not to allow.

As Asia watches in relatively silent concern as America spreads its physical military presence once more in the region and North Korea is lined up in the unholy trinity of evil, so Asia also contemplates whether the economic and corporate nostra it absorbed across the Pacific may turn out to be equally troubling in the long run.

Having built itself for half a century on this model and market, these are troubling times for many. Also having accepted WTO and unprecedented opening up of their own domestic markets in return for continuing access to US and other major markets, there is a sense they have not had the best of the bargain.

New standards

But will Asia reverse its economic reforms? No. Those they have made were done because Asian countries know they need them. Asia has largely left the era of IMF-imposed actions and is choosing for itself. The choice to most is clear. Professional standards must rise and new standards must be adopted.

And they might not always be American. Singapore and Hong Kong have both followed the European International Accounting Standards rather than US GAAP. The European sense that accounts must follow the spirit and not just the letter of the law is much closer to Asian thinking than the ruled-based US system exploited so ruthlessly by legions of US companies and their advisers.

One American would say that Asia has little or nothing to learn from America about accounting standards. John May, the Albuquerque-based founder of smartstockinvestor.com, did a study for Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia, a leading emerging-markets house at the forefront of including corporate-governance criteria in its research coverage of companies. May found that his sample of Asian companies had much more reliable reporting standards than their equivalents like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Dell, Oracle, Wal-Mart and General Electric.

So Asia has a quiet sense of where it stands and what it needs to do. Gloating over others' misfortune or shortcomings is not the way. Other peoples' troubles are lessons to be learned. Behind the silence, in more and more countries, there is frantic activity to address Asia's own shortcomings. Nothing that is revealed in America will distract Asia from this task. — GVNN/The WorldPaper