Following the path hewn by Lincoln Tan's groundbreaking column in the NZ Herald last week announcing to New Zealand that Asian men do like boobies as much as other men, perhaps a space has opened up to point out other commonalities between "Asians" and humanity in general.

Sure, the urgent external and internal economic imperative for New Zealand and the media to engage with "Asia" is creeping into popular consciousness. In everyday conversation, the spectre of the emerging mega-economies of China and India wields an almost superstitious power that goes with things that are not well understood; and the growing market of New Zealand "Asian" media consumers is being freshly traded against mainstream advertising dollars. But if "Asians", Asian countries, and other foreigners are to become fully human to the rest of New Zealand, they can't be viewed only through the slightly pervy lens of New Zealand's business interests.

In terms of knowledge about the outside world, seeing Asian countries shifting in popular view from peril to goldmine should feel like an improvement. But it gives me the same feeling as the shift in the experience of East Asian women getting catcalled on the streets of Auckland: a decade ago there used to be racial harassment, now there are requests to get some of our hot Asian goodies. Um - yay. Is this the revolution yet? Obviously, countries are not just economic units or objects of desire, but civil societies, political societies and sites of cultural innovation. They have personalities as well as pulchritude.

As nonsensically broad as the category of "Asia" is, at least when you're in there somewhere, it's easy to find examples that don't fit the definition of "Asia" as markets and producers. I recently spent a couple of weeks in Bangkok and the Burmese-dominated Thai border town of Mae Sot, where I stumbled upon the motto "Man is a social animal" being used as the slogan of the Overseas Irrawaddy Association. The OIA is one of the largest Burmese migrant worker community-run associations in Mae Sot, providing what shoestring social support they can to a teeming population of about 500,000 underpaid, overworked, overcrowded and often illegal Burmese factory workers and labourers in that small town. As migrant workers, they were in a different category from the politically displaced activists and ethnically persecuted Burmese in the refugee camp down the road, but their view on business with Burma was still "don't do any". Although they were focused on survival, they knew their poverty needed a political solution. "The main problem in Burma is the military dictatorship", they asserted. "We must all take responsibility for building our movement for democracy."

I didn't ask them their opinion on boobs, although everyone in town rode cute motorbikes. They did introduce me to a 13-year-old girl they recently rescued from being sold into sex slavery. I asked her: "What do you think of the prospects of New Zealand's trade relationship with China?" Well no, of course I didn't. She was a little shy, but bright, sparky and curious - someone who was nearly transformed into an economic unit, but maybe still had a chance at staying a human being.

In Mae Sot there are Burmese dissidents, revolutionaries, and NGO workers emerging from every crevice, clutching cellphones and appointment diaries instead of small arms. You could say it's a political place.

Meanwhile, in Bangkok, commerce is king and in a reflection of the corporate imperative, the only grand public spaces approximating the usual function of, say, city squares, are part of the landscaping of epic-scale shopping malls - there isn't anywhere else to just sit and relax.

But rather than being a victory of the consumerisation and depoliticisation of the public, the wealthy shopping classes of the city now hold their regular anti-government demonstrations at the mall. The beautiful courtyard of the super-elite Siam Paragon mall has been the host of ongoing protests against the corruption and increasing authoritarianism of the caretaker Thaksin government. Even when the landscape doesn't appear to permit politics, it can be overrun by people acting as social beings, not just consumer markets.

These are a couple of examples of "Asians" in "Asia" knowing that solutions to their countries' economic dysfunction must be found in struggles for democracy and defence of human rights.

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