Description
HarperCollins The Trouble with Tigers The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia by Victor Mallet
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.Most of the countries of south-east Asia Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei and Burma though extremely diverse in their cultures and political systems, have two things in common: up to 1997, they had been enjoying extraordinary economic growth; after 1997, their economies have crashed.After years of growth rates that Western politicians would die for, things have started going badly wrong for the countries of south-east Asia.Victor Mallets remarkable book uses interviews with politicians and drug addicts, environmentalists and warlords, prostitutes, peasant farmers and captains of industry. The result is evocative reportage of incomparable intelligence.The Trouble with Tigers examines in detail the miracle that turned sour. It looks closely at: the debate about the existence of Asian values the relationship between democracy and authoritarianism SE Asias Generation X as wild and happy-go-lucky as any Western teenagers the regions political and business leaders the environmental disaster befalling the region power politics between Russia, China and the United States in the regionThe book concludes that though Asia has enjoyed enormous economic growth in recent years, it now faces formidable environmental, social and political challenges.