Description
Although ethnic Chinese capital has contributed greatly to the postcolonial development of Southeast Asia, scholars and politicians paid scant attention to it until the early 1990s when it became fashionable to assert that Chinese entrepreneurs from Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong were collaborating in business ventures responsible for a huge flow 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.
The paucity of empirical studies on the formation and development of even the largest Chinese-owned companies call into question many of the sensational claims made about ethnic Chinese business. Does a handful of deals by a tiny number of leading capitalists add up to a 'global tribe'? Does the popular notion of dynamic 'Chinese Capitalism' and a proliferation of intra-ethnic corporate ties among Chinese businesses stand serious examination in the wider Chinese communities of Southeast Asia?
This volume contests the fashionable thesis that the institutions, norms and practices ethnic Chinese help explain the dynamics and growth of Chinese enterprise in Southeast Asia, and challenges the notion that Chinese entrepreneurs have depended primarily on business networks based on shared identities to develop their corporate ideas.
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