Although ethnic Chinese capital has contributed greatly to the postcolonial development of South-East Asia, scholars and politicians paid scant attention to it until the early 1990s when it became fashionable to assert that Chinese entrepreneurs from South-East Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong were collaborating in business ventures responsible for a huge flow of investments into China. Today it is widely assumed that Chinese capitalists in the region will have an enormous impact on the global economy in the 21st century. Studies allege that they run extensive ethnically based business networks that add hugely to their collective muscle. Some say that they will emerge even stronger from the Asian financial crisis that occurred in 1997 and are destined to become a global economic force. Existing explanations for the remarkable success of businesses in South-East Asia owned and managed by people of ethnic Chinese origin have emphasised cultural factors, arguing that there are special models of Chinese business, Chinese capital and Chinese entrepreneurship, and that business networks based on shared identities have been vital in developing the corporate base for such businesses.
This book argues that the position is in fact much more complex, varying in the different countries of South-East Asia and changing over time. It presents empirical findings from various South-East Asian countries - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and Indonesia - and demonstrates that Chinese businessmen employ a variety of strategies in the networking, entrepreneurship and organisational and form development.