How Asia Works

How Asia Works
Author: Joe Studwell
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013-07-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0802193471

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“A good read for anyone who wants to understand what actually determines whether a developing economy will succeed.” —Bill Gates, “Top 5 Books of the Year” An Economist Best Book of the Year from a reporter who has spent two decades in the region, and who the Financial Times said “should be named chief myth-buster for Asian business.” In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distills his extensive research into the economies of nine countries—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China—into an accessible, readable narrative that debunks Western misconceptions, shows what really happened in Asia and why, and for once makes clear why some countries have boomed while others have languished. Studwell’s in-depth analysis focuses on three main areas: land policy, manufacturing, and finance. Land reform has been essential to the success of Asian economies, giving a kick-start to development by utilizing a large workforce and providing capital for growth. With manufacturing, industrial development alone is not sufficient, Studwell argues. Instead, countries need “export discipline,” a government that forces companies to compete on the global scale. And in finance, effective regulation is essential for fostering, and sustaining growth. To explore all of these subjects, Studwell journeys far and wide, drawing on fascinating examples from a Philippine sugar baron’s stifling of reform to the explosive growth at a Korean steel mill. “Provocative . . . How Asia Works is a striking and enlightening book . . . A lively mix of scholarship, reporting and polemic.” —The Economist

Asian Godfathers

Asian Godfathers
Author: Joe Studwell
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2010-09-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1847651445

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40 or 50 families control the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Their interests range from banking to property, from shipping to sugar, from vice to gambling. 13 of the 50 richest families in the world are in South East Asia yet they are largely unknown outside confined business circles. Often this is because they control the press and television as well as everything else. How do they do it? What are their secrets? And is it good news or bad for the places where they operate? Joe Studwell explosively lifts the lid on a world of staggering secrecy and shows that the little most people know is almost entirely wrong.

The China Dream

The China Dream
Author: Joe Studwell
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780802139757

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Examines the many attempts to capitalize on "the last big market in the world" stretching back seven hundred years and includes an analysis of the present unprecedented expansion.

Asia as Method

Asia as Method
Author: Kuan-Hsing Chen
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2010-04-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822391694

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Centering his analysis in the dynamic forces of modern East Asian history, Kuan-Hsing Chen recasts cultural studies as a politically urgent global endeavor. He argues that the intellectual and subjective work of decolonization begun across East Asia after the Second World War was stalled by the cold war. At the same time, the work of deimperialization became impossible to imagine in imperial centers such as Japan and the United States. Chen contends that it is now necessary to resume those tasks, and that decolonization, deimperialization, and an intellectual undoing of the cold war must proceed simultaneously. Combining postcolonial studies, globalization studies, and the emerging field of “Asian studies in Asia,” he insists that those on both sides of the imperial divide must assess the conduct, motives, and consequences of imperial histories. Chen is one of the most important intellectuals working in East Asia today; his writing has been influential in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and mainland China for the past fifteen years. As a founding member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society and its journal, he has helped to initiate change in the dynamics and intellectual orientation of the region, building a network that has facilitated inter-Asian connections. Asia as Method encapsulates Chen’s vision and activities within the increasingly “inter-referencing” East Asian intellectual community and charts necessary new directions for cultural studies.

Becoming Asia

Becoming Asia
Author: Alice Lyman Miller
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2011-01-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804777233

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At the conclusion of World War II, Asia was hardly more than a geographic expression. Yet today we recognize Asia as a vibrant and assertive region, fully transformed from the vulnerable nation-states that emerged following the Second World War. The transformation was by no means an inevitable one, but the product of two key themes that have dominated Asia's international relations since 1945: the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to enlist the region's states as assets in the Cold War, and the struggle of nationalistic Asian leaders to develop the domestic support to maintain power and independence in a dangerous international context. Becoming Asia provides a comprehensive, systemic account of how these themes played out in Asian affairs during the postwar years, covering not only East Asia, but South and Central Asia as well. In addition to exploring the interplay between nationalism and Cold War bipolarity during the first postwar decades, authors Alice Lyman Miller and Richard Wich chart the rise of largely export-led economies that are increasingly making the region the global center of gravity, and document efforts in the ongoing search for regional integration. The book also traces the origins and evolution of deep-rooted issues that remain high on the international agenda, such as the Taiwan question, the division of Korea and the threat of nuclear proliferation, the Kashmir issue, and the nuclearized Indian-Pakistani conflict, and offers an account of the rise of China and its implications for regional and global security and prosperity. Primary documents excerpted throughout the text—such as leaders' talks and speeches, international agreements, secret policy assessments—enrich accounts of events, offering readers insight into policymakers' assumptions and perceptions at the time.

How China Works

How China Works
Author: Jacob Eyferth
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2006-09-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134163983

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Presenting compelling case study material, international specialists examine the labour issues surrounding the workplace in China during a tumultuous time in the country’s history and reassesses the significance of labour process theory in the context of the changing Chinese workplace.

MITI and the Japanese Miracle

MITI and the Japanese Miracle
Author: Chalmers Johnson
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 818
Release: 1982-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 080476560X

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The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state's role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone's ever analyzing the matter. The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Japanese economic bureaucracy are central to the continuing debate between advocates of the communist-type command economies and advocates of the Western-type mixed market economies. The fully bureaucratized command economies misallocate resources and stifle initiative; in order to function at all, they must lock up their populations behind iron curtains or other more or less impermeable barriers. The mixed market economies struggle to find ways to intrude politically determined priorities into their market systems without catching a bad case of the "English disease" or being frustrated by the American-type legal sprawl. The Japanese, of course, do not have all the answers. But given the fact that virtually all solutions to any of the critical problems of the late twentieth century--energy supply, environmental protection, technological innovation, and so forth--involve an expansion of official bureaucracy, the particular Japanese priorities and procedures are instructive. At the very least they should forewarn a foreign observer that the Japanese achievements were not won without a price being paid.

Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling

Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling
Author: Jane Hyun
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2005-05-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0060731192

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You're educated and ambitious. Sure, the hours are long and corporate politics are a bane, but you focus on getting the job done, confident that you will be rewarded in the long run. Yet, somehow, your hard work isn't paying off, and you watch from the sidelines as your colleagues get promoted. Those who make it to management positions in this intensely competitive corporate environment seem to understand an unwritten code for marketing and aligning themselves politically. Furthermore, your strong work ethic and raw intelligence were sufficient when you started at the firm, but now they're expecting you to be a rainmaker who can "bring in clients" and "exert influence" on others. The top of the career ladder seems beyond your reach. Perhaps you've hit the bamboo ceiling. For the last decade, Asian Americans have been the fastest growing population in the United States. Asians comprise the largest college graduate population in America, and are often referred to as the "Model Minority" – but they continue to lag in the American workplace. If qualified Asians are entering the workforce with the right credentials, why aren't they making it to the corner offices and corporate boardrooms? Career coach Jane Hyun explains that Asians have not been able to break the "bamboo ceiling" because many are unable to effectively manage the cultural influences shaping their individual characteristics and workplace behavior—factors that are often at odds with the competencies needed to succeed at work. Traditional Asian cultural values can conflict with dominant corporate culture on many levels, resulting in a costly gap that individuals and companies need to bridge. The subtle, unconscious behavioral differences exhibited by Asian employees are often misinterpreted by their non-Asian counterparts, resulting in lost career opportunities and untapped talent. Never before has this dichotomy been so thoroughly explored, and in this insightful book, Hyun uses case studies, interviews and anecdotes to identify the issues and provide strategies for Asian Americans to succeed in corporate America. Managers will learn how to support the Asian members of their teams to realize their full potential and to maintain their competitive edge in today's multicultural workplace.

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Author: Ezra F. Vogel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2013-10-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674257413

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Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Deng’s youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China’s preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao—and he did not hesitate.

Makers of Modern Asia

Makers of Modern Asia
Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674365410

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The twenty-first century has been dubbed the Asian Century. Highlighting diverse thinker-politicians rather than billionaire businessmen, Makers of Modern Asia presents eleven leaders who theorized and organized anticolonial movements, strategized and directed military campaigns, and designed and implemented political systems.