Author(s): Victor Mallet

Asian

In this lively study of the turmoil in modern south-east Asia, Victor Mallet argues that governments made the mistake of crowing about Asian values when they should have been doing more to manage the fastest industrial revolution the world has yet seen. Far from avoiding pitfalls of corruption, family disintegration and environmental destruction experienced by Europe and the US over the past 150 years, south-east Asia has fallen into the same traps. But the message from the inhabitants of the region encountered by the author is not one of unalloyed gloom. Three decades of economic growth and improved education have spawned a middle class determined to overcome the financial crisis and build democracy and justice. With a new chapter that brings us up-to-date with the most recent developments in the area, Victor Mallet's wide-ranging and perceptive study sheds much-needed light on the complexities of this varied region. Victor Mallet is South Africa correspondent for the Financial Times. Prior to that he was deputy Features Editor and South-East Asia correspondent for that newspaper. In 1990, as Middle East correspondent for Reuters, he was the only western journalist in Kuwait City when the Iraqis invaded. Paperback