The Bashing Wasn't Funny : LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
International Herald Tribune
May 25, 1994
Jonathan Gage and Kevin Murphy 

Regarding "East Asia Will Find Its Own Roads to Democracy" (Opinion, May 17) by Mahathir bin Mohamad:

When I worked in Washington in the 1970s, Japanese-bashing was popular. Some of my American colleagues, resenting the increasingly stiff economic competition, joked: "Perhaps the U.S. helped rebuild Japan a bit too well. We're the victims of our own success." When I studied there in the 1980s, some of my professors, also jokingly, said the same thing. Now, in the 1990s, I wonder whether those remarks were really meant to be jokes. The last part of Prime Minister Mahathir's speech rings a bell. This time I fully share his views.

ARIZAL EFFENDI.

Bekasi, Indonesia.

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