Michael Backman

Business class lounge chatter

So you are a young British bloke working for a multinational company and about to go to Asia for the first time? Then get this book! In just 188 pages it will give you all the facts and opinions you need to become one of the boys (except for the subject "local women"). And you can have it finished by the time your plane lands in Bombay or Singapore.

This does not mean that this is a bad book. In short chapters it pinpoints at some of the major challenges of the region (demographics, some of the many ecological issues), tells you about major issues in some countries, and highlights a few sectors (medical tourism, private banking).

It is just... so Anglo-centric (Indonesian law is Dutch-based and hence "obscure", Burmese law based upon on English common law, and thus an asset), anecdotal (it elaborates on eunuchs and backwarded medicine in China), focussed on multinational companies (no attention at all is paid to local small and medium-sized companies, the real carriers of improvement to ordinary people's lives), tries to explain everything out of micro-economics (the low birth rate is fully caused by the rising standard of living; but this is not the case in the US or northern Europe, nor among the middle and higher classes of non-Confucianistic peoples of East Asia), and its suggestions obscure (could there be other movies from Tokyo besides Lost in Translation?).… (altro)