Business

Saturday August 15, 2009

A glance at the Asian miracle


The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth

Author: Michael Schuman

Publisher: Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins

THIS is actually a very easy book to read and an entertaining one, especially when it is about your own country and its regional neighbours.

Michael Schuman sticks to the facts, no doubt due to his background as the current Time magazine correspondent in the region and having covered Asia as a journalist for more than a decade.

All in all a good result, a satisfying read and pretty accurate for the subjects covered.

Discussing the leaders in the region since the end of World War II can be controversial, and Schuman neither panders to supporters or detractors, resulting in a relatively balanced view.

If you are looking for controversy and criticism, this is not the book to go to. But if you want the recent history of the region centred on economic development and background, then you are in for a treat.

Not to give too much away, Schuman, through his interviews with the main characters and published sources of information, describes the forgotten story of how Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew could hardly sleep in the early days of the country’s separation from Malaysia.

He describes how Sony’s founder Akio Morita was feeling “not amused” on a 1953 trip to Dusseldorf, Germany, wondering if Japan would be able to make it after the devastation of World War II when a waiter, trying to be friendly, pointed out that a paper umbrella stuck into a dessert came from Japan.

He says despite it all, Malaysia still experienced the Asian miracle and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is unquestionably the father of it.

Indonesia and South Korea is described here too, with controversial characters like Suharto and Emil Salim, and Park Chung Hee who claimed control of South Korea in a 1961 military coup.

If you have trouble reading and following all the economic and political issues and the history of our neighbours and ourselves, then this is a useful little compendium.

Malaysia and Singapore are among the countries written about, which allows readers to assess how accurate Schuman’s depictions and take on the goings-on in Asia are.

For this reader, if the Malaysia and Singapore chapters are anything to go by, they reflect accurately public knowledge and maybe even public sentiment, as well as possibly Western sentiment on the issues.

This book is a historical narrative about how Asia grew from a war-torn region with little hope, to a thriving if not quite there yet modern economy it is today.

It can be read as standalone chapters on particular countries or as a whole, with the book structured as a connected story on the rise of Asia from the early days through to the Asian financial crisis and now.

This is an intelligent book that points out that the proponents of “Asian values” theory of the miracle ignore the fact that these values did not save the region from the stagnation of several centuries that allowed the West to catch up and outpace Asia.

Schuman admits that Asians across the region exhibit certain shared characteristics that contributed to economic success, such as high savings that built up capital for industrial investment, but feels that the region is too diverse for such a blanket assessment.

He also points out that some observers in the West feel that Confucianism is as important to the development of Asia’s hypergrowth economies as Protestantism was to the rise of capitalism in the West, but makes his own view clear.

Asia had to do something radical and new to make the miracle happens, he comments.

Apart from being a journalist, the author also has a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University in New York City.

In one section, Schuman says that in a way, the Asian miracle is not a miracle at all but is won from personal sacrifice and hard work, together with the power of the free market and free enterprise led by the United States.

Certain Asian leaders say that without the United States being a guarantor of security in the region, along with an open market that was willing to accept Asian exports, much of Asia’s export-led growth would not have been possible.

The Asian miracle is as much a triumph of the US free trade system, as it is a triumph of Asia, a point that is often underplayed.

One reason was the US’ objective of creating a barrier of friendly states against the Soviet bloc in the region, Schuman says.

But he points out that the Asian miracle, as Western economists tend to refer to the region’s growth since World War II, was certainly a miracle if one looks back at how hopeless and pitiful Asia was in the middle of the last century.

And this is not that long ago with any South Korean (or Malaysian) above the age of 30 having a living memory of grinding poverty.

Schuman ends the book in a rather melancholy mood in a chapter that deals with the crisis of confidence in America in the latest global financial crisis, when he visits the down-and-out industrial heartland of rural South Carolina.

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