After the financial crisis hit East Asia in 1997/1998, the question of Asian values lost most of its political significance and became largely a matter for academic debate. Few would accept the proposition that there was a distinct set of Asian values as such. Even East Asia, let alone Asia as a whole, is too diverse to allow for that. But the values in Asia do shape attitudes towards government and the practice of politics, even as these change with the impact of rapid economic development and the enormous social changes to which that gives rise. There is therefore an unavoidable tension between the impact of globalization and the pressures for adherence to universal norms and values on the one side and the influence on states of past values and customs amid the necessity of maintaining an often-fragile social and political order on the other. Given the dominance of the United States in the immediate post-Cold War era, it has become the main source of pressure for the adoption of what America sees as universal values and practices. At the same time, it has become the main object for opprobrium by those who resist those pressures or who seek to promote alternative vision. The so-called debate on Asian values may have been superseded, but the issues it raised will continue to reverberate, especially as a rising authoritarian power, China, is beginning to challenge American ‘soft power’. The apparent success of China’s Communist Party-led state capitalism has reignited the debate. Except that this time it is some Westerners who argue that the so-called Beijing consensus is superior to the allegedly defunct Washington consensus.