 The Singapore case, however, points to another dimension of the politics of community that brings us back to the communitarian defense of cultural particularism. Democratic reformers in Singapore typically think of democracy in terms of free and fair competitive elections what Western analysts often label “minimal democracy”. In Hong Kong, the situation is similar—the aspiration to “full” democracy put forward by social critics turns out to mean (nothing more than) an elected legislature and Chief Executive. Put differently, it is quite striking that the republican tradition in communitarian thought with its vision of strong democracy supported by active, public-spirited citizens who participate in political decision-making and held shape the future direction of their society though political debate seems largely absent from political discourse in Singapore and Hong Kong, and perhaps East Asia more generally. Many East Asians are clamoring for secure democratic rights, but this rarely translates into the demand that all citizens should be committed to politics on an ongoing basis or the view that, as David Miller puts it, “politics is indeed a necessary part of the good life” (Miller 2000). At one level, the relative absence of republican ideals can be explained by the fact that there are no equivalents of Aristotle and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in East Asian philosophy. It can also be argued that republicanism fails to resonate because East Asians typically place more emphasis on other forms of communal life—the family in particular has been important theme in Confucian ethical theory and practice (relative to Western philosophy). To the extent that different forms of communal life do conflict in practice, in short, it may the case that different cultures will draw the line in different places. 