The Trouble With Tigers

The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia

Victor Mallet

• Publisher: HarperCollins Business
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780006388883
• eBook ISBN: 9780007450497
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: International Economics
• Index: Economics

(This edition contains a limited number of illustrations.)

The most frank, readable and detailed account available in the English language of the political, economic, environmental and cultural changes sweeping through south-east Asia.

Notes

Introduction: A miracle that turned sour

1 Asia Rising, by Jim Rohwer, p. 24. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1996.

2 Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, by Gunnar Myrdal. Twentieth Century Fund/Pantheon Books, 1968.

3 Contemporary Southeast Asia, by Robert C. Bone, Jr., pp. 114–16. Random House, 1962.

4 Emerging Asia: Changes and Challenges, p. 11 and p. 21. Asian Development Bank, 1997; and see ‘Asia’s population advantage’, The Economist, 13 September 1997.

5 See, for example, Thai Culture in Transition, pp. 61ff, by William Klausner. The Siam Society, Bangkok, 1997.

6 Anwar was sacked by Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister, in late 1998 and detained after leading pro-democracy demonstrations.

Chapter 1: The rise and fall of ‘Asian values’

1 Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel, by Bui Tin (translated and adapted by Judy Stowe and Do Van). Hurst and Co., 1995.

2 Although he focused on the near east, not the far east, the classic text on this subject is Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, by Edward W. Said. Penguin, 1995 (first published by Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).

3 As the writer Ian Buruma noted, the missionary and the libertine changed places. (The Missionary and the Libertine. Faber and Faber, 1996.)

4 ‘Culture Is Destiny; A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew’, by Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, March/April 1994.

5 Indonesia, for instance, won independence from the Dutch in 1949, while Malaysia (as Malaya, because it had yet to incorporate the Borneo states) became independent in 1957.

6 Published in English as The Voice of Asia: Two Leaders Discuss the Coming Century, by Mahathir Mohamad and Shintaro Ishihara. Kodansha International, 1995. Shintaro had already made his name with the bestselling nationalistic work, The Japan That Can Say No.

7 See Japan in War and Peace: Essays on History, Culture and Race, p. 48, by John Dower. Fontana Press, 1996.

8 Asian Values and Modernization, ed. Seah Chee-Meow. Singapore University Press, 1977.

9 ‘Politics and Cultural Myths: Democracy Asian style versus the West’, by Stephanie Lawson, the Asia-Pacific magazine, June 1996. ‘A proponent of the new model, Wu Teh Yao, claimed than an Eastern form of democracy could be arrived at through these means, producing a new model of rule called “Consencracy”. What is notably absent from this neologism is the qualifier derived from demos – the people. In its place we find consensus.’

10 Interview with the author, 25 April 1997.

11 ‘The United States: “Go East, Young Man”,’ by Kishore Mahbubani, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1994. One of his points was that it was now the Americans whose thinking had become so rigid that they were unable to raise important questions about their own society.

12 ‘The 10 Values That Undergird East Asian Strength and Success’, by Tommy Koh, International Herald Tribune, 11 December 1993.

13 Listen to the Emerging Markets of Southeast Asia: Long-Term Strategies for Effective Partnerships, by Corrado G. M. Letta. John Wiley and Sons, 1996.

14 ‘Asian Values Deserve More Respect’, by Reginald Dale, International Herald Tribune, 17 May 1995.

15 The ‘neo-Orientalist’ view has been perpetuated by sociological studies which were sometimes misinterpreted by others and which sometimes concentrated on historical material that failed to take account of the rapid effects of modernization. ‘Most Asians respect authority too much to share the western distrust of authority and power,’ wrote Lucian Pye. ‘. . . people in those [Asian] cultures have positive feelings about dependency and have usually regarded a craving for autonomy as quixotic and unbecoming in civil relations.’ (Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority, by Lucian W. Pye, with Mary W. Pye. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1985.)

16 ‘Singapore Flogging Defense: The “Chaos” on US Streets’, by Philip Shenon, New York Times, 13 April 1994.

17 Interview with the author, 1 April 1997.

18 ‘Manila’s Dirty Harry returns to the beat’, by Edward Luce, Financial Times, 30 June 1996.

19 Interview with the author, 31 March 1997.

20 ‘Confucius or convenience?’, by Victor Mallet, Financial Times, 5 March 1994.

21 Private communication with the author.

22 Interview with the author, 26 February 1997.

23 Interview with the author, 31 March 1997.

24 Interview with the author, 20 March 1997.

25 Interview with the author, 28 January 1997.

26 Interview with the author, 19 February 1997.

27 ‘Go East, Young Man’, by Kishore Mahbubani, Far Eastern Economic Review, 19 May 1994.

28 ‘Industrial conflict in west at 50-year low’, by Robert Taylor, Financial Times, 9 April 1996.

29 ‘The Uncertain States: The US should be enjoying a peace dividend rather than an unease dividend’, by Gerard Baker, Financial Times, 29–31 March 1997; ‘Major Crime Falls Again, But Why?’ by Fox Butterfield, International Herald Tribune, 6 January 1997.

30 Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, p. 328 in Penguin Books edition, 1995, by Edward Said. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.

31 Corruption and Democracy in Thailand, p.145, by Pasuk Phongpaichit and Sungsidh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Map
• Preface
• Introduction: A miracle that turned sour
• ONE: The rise and fall of ‘Asian values’
• TWO: The new democrats
• THREE: Sex, drugs and religion: Social upheaval in the 1990s
• FOUR: The day of the robber barons
• FIVE: Nature in retreat: South-east Asia’s environmental disaster
• SIX: Enemies outside and in: The ‘Balkans of the Orient’ and the great powers
• SEVEN: Ten troubled tigers: The nations of south-east Asia
• EIGHT: After the crash: The unfinished revolution
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher