Asia Rising

by Jim Rohwer

In one of the year's most provocative business books, a former Asian correspondent and executive editor of The Economist dissects the ways in which countries such as China, India, South Korea,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684807521
• ISBN13: 9780684807522
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 382 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

One of the best Intros to Greater China

Mr Rohwer is a HK based journalist for London's newsweekly, The Economist, spending more than 5 years in HK and 12 years at the magazine before writing his first book which was a decade in the making. It is an ambitious book, as he presents and interprets the rise of Asian countries since WWII, with center stage on PRChina's development, yet including the 5 Tigers (Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore), Indochina, and the India and Pakistani subcontinent. Asia is illustrated on a two page map and PRChina with a separate map, along with almost 20 tables, graphs, and charts. He has a comprehensive 10-page bibliography and a 16-page index. Rohwer is an uncommonly forthright author, writes without the British colloquialism and arrogance of journalists based in the UK as he was educated in the States at UC Berkeley and a Harvard Law JD.In a broad-brush introduction in the first three chapters he compares and contrasts the Asian to Western economies. Each Asian country (1995) is presented as metrics in tables (p38-39) so that the reader can quickly compare and contrast key measurements such as GNP, GD Savings, GD Investment, Gov't spending, demographics, imports and exports. Most metrics were based on World Bank reports. He also presents the population growth to year 2015 (p43) of Asian cities and how they compare around the world. Most importantly he showed, from a historical perspective, the political and economic structures in Taiwan and S Korea to foster growth after the devastation of WW2 and Korean conflict.Then he concentrated on the Greater China community in the next four chapters (80 pgs) which I consider the meat of his book. This includes PRChina (Communist), Taiwan (Western), and OEChinese (ASEAN). In the late 80s and early 90s, the OEChinese invested in PRChina, more than from Japan and US (p108). I was surprised to find out how PRChina become the investor into HK and Taiwan so that it can rev-up its own economy (p133).Rohwer contends that the Achilles'heel of PRChina is timely development of the infrastructure in rural and cities; such as roads, electrical grid, communications, sewage, fewer barriers to trading (freight forwarding), and rule of law (p140). Rapid development of this societal infrastructure is the key impediments for the Greater China to become the #2 dominant economy in the world by 2015.The core information regarding the OEChinese and how they fit into the Greater China community is in Chap 11 The Business Roster: The Hua Ch'iao. In over 14 pages, Rowher explains the intricacies network of self-capitalization and family enterprise formation. On this basis, he shows how OEChinese dominated the businesses in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Furthermore, he goes on to show that the Greater China generates business value that is currently larger than the US and is comparable with Japan plus Western Europe. This occurred because Chinese were not consumption-oriented (large savers), taxes for socia

Extraordinary & Comprehensive Survey

First, a bit of bad news: Rohwer died in a boating accident in France in Sept, 2001. So there won't be a second edition to this or any of his other books.Rohwer (Berkeley MA in Economics, Harvard JD), who was an investment banker with CSFB in Hong Kong, brought a unique set of qualifications to his research. Some people criticized Rohwer for failing to predict the Asian economic crisis in 1998. (One book has the title: "Asia Falling".) But he did, on page 18: "My guess in that, around 2000, Asia's economic growth will suddenly slow down." This book was first published in 1995, so he saw it coming - even though his timing wasn't perfect. The fact that he made such a prediction, contrary to the tone and theme of his own book, is suggestive. Rohwer was prophetic.Rohwer's sequel: "Remade in America" is just as good. Writing at the height of America's boom, he saw America's slowdown coming, and went on to suggest continuing strength in China's growth. Nothing has happened so far to contradict anything Rohwer wrote.Other books I also recommend include "Thunder from the East" by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn. This couple won the Pulitzer Prize for the NY Times for their China reporting, and their CVs are sterling. "The Rise of China" by William Overholt (Harvard BA, Yale PhD), a former banker at Bankers Trust in Hong Kong, is slightly dated, but shows the brilliant judgment of the author. "China's Economic Transformation" by Professor Gregory Chow, Princeton University's former chief of econometrics, brings Chow's specialist quantitative skills to bear on an authoritative analysis of China's economy. All these authors would no doubt support Rohwer's findings and applaud his outstanding research. I myself can't praise Rohwer enough.

free markets + rule of law = growth

"Anybody arrogant enough to write a book generalizing about the fate of three fifths of mankind living in the world's most ancient and complex and now fastest changing civilizations deserves all the criticism that I will no probably get" (from the Acknowledgments, pg. 351)The author's humility is endearing, but I am compelled to share my enthusiasm for this book in glowing terms.Asia Rising is far and away the best economics book I have ever read. The author is a journalist, and he quite happily combines anecdotes and quantitative analysis to present a compelling story of wealth creation.Although the book covers a lot of ground, the theme of the virtue of free markets and the mischief of big government recurs frequently. The author points out the paradox (to Westerners) of how authoritarian regimes in Asia have in a single generation lifted hundreds of millions of Asians out of poverty, while more democratic and socialist governments have created a legacy of depravation. The comparisons between China and India are the most poignant. A few quotes:"How can it possibly have happened that...China's authoritarian government has delivered far greater benefits to the average Chinese than India's fairly stable and democratically elected governments have delivered to the average Indian? The short answer is ...China's government has followed policies which, because they rely on...markets to set prices and allocate resources, spread the benefits of economic growth pretty widely through society. In India, by contrast, ...rulers have acted almost entirely at the behest of...the better off." (pg. 173)"After 1978, China grew by letting competition flourish; before 1991, India tried to grow by eliminating as much of it as possible because it was "wasteful"." (pg. 177)"For almost thirty years Taiwan and Sourth Korea were run by rather nasty military dicatatorships. Yet there, and in Hong Kong and Singapore too, the authoritarian approach was not only more efficient economically than democratic decision making; it proved to be more egalitarian as well-for the simple reason that it is the rare lobby in a democracy that wins government benfits for the poor rather than the previileged." (pg. 326).The book is such a page turner, I was dreading finishing it. It is a tour-de-force, with thought provoking content dealing with politics, culture, policy, family life, and many other topics. I found myself pausing frequently to reflect on my own life, my values, and the society I live in. In this sense "Asia Rising" is a great book, not just a great economics book.

The best textbook on Asian economics

Jim Rohwer's Asia Rising is unquestionably the best book to come out and explain the Asian growth that has propelled Asia to the centerstage of the global economy. While some people may now look at the book's title and say, hey, how wrong he has been in his prediction -- they will end up judging the book by the cover, literally. In fact, if one throws away the first 20 pages of his book, his book indeed cautions and seriously warns of the problems in Asia and its potential consequences -- just as it analyses and lauds the power of the Asian growth with journalist's skill for clarity and an economists eye for numerical detail. I read this book twice and still use it as a reference guide in my work as a financial journalist based in Taipei, a country least affected by the Asian crisis. Mr.Rohwer, formerly Asia expert at the economist who now works for Fortune, has also been brilliantly following and writing on Asia in the aftermath of the great Asian implosion. His recent article in Fortune entitled "Why Taiwan may be next to fall" made full sense even if the officials here rejected it with perverse pretention. Indeed, Taiwan has most of the problems that has existed in other Asian countries, but the only thing that saved it from the contagion like China is due to their closed financial systems. But the global deflation and slowdown in trade is now taking a toll on the growth of the export-driven Taiwan. This will continue to pose major problems in 1999. As corporate earnings deteriorate, banks are now seeing their bad loan ratios double just as their spreads are being squeezed by falling interest rates. And banks are making little money now but are asked to set aside massive amount of loan loss provisions. This phenonmenon is now leading to a credit crunch in the banking system which is making it very difficult for companies to get money to cope with this severe economic downturn. The system is now in a dangerous catch-22 situation. As Mr.Rohwer pointed out financial crises do not have to a direct result of a cross-country contagion, but locally-developed ones can be quite as lethal. And this will not come into being when things are good overseas and companies can ride on the export boom, but, to quote Warren Buffet, bare bottoms will surface only when the water level drops in a swimming pool full of naked swimmers. TN