How-Asia-Got-Rich

A thoughtful and thought-provoking in-depth study of the economic evolution of Asian societies and cultures.

This panaoramic work describes how Japan's centuries-old fascination with China has been a platform for its post-war growth strategy as well as a magnet drawing Japan back into a deeper relationship with Asia. The author argues that after years of self-imposed isolation Japan is actively seeking new alliances with its Asian neighbors that may ultimately supplant its Cold War pact with the United States. She tracks the enormous recent outpouring of Japanese investment and official assistance to Asia as part of longstanding efforts to enhance Japanese security.

And she suggests that the culmination of these efforts has been the invention of a new capitalist ideology that runs counter to the convergence theories of free market capitalism and creates a powerful current against globalization.

Edith Terry knows Asia. In this must read book she skewers many popular myths and reveals the true facts behind the Asian miracle.

From the Author
The past 150 years in Asia looks very different if your optic is relations between China and Japan rather than the bilateral relations of either with the US. In "How Asia Got Rich," I have tried to take that history and bring it up to date, particularly in the context of Japan's Cold War and post-Cold War relations with the rest of Asia. The book is about the changing geopolitics of the region, and how Japan's struggle to find a new social and economic paradigm is bound up in its quest for a new role in Asia.

The book is also highly personal. I grew up in Asia, as the daughter of a State Department 'missionary' of the free market whose job was to remake Asia in the American model in the 1950s and 1960s. I weave my own family's history into the larger history, as well as my decade of experience covering Japan as a correspondent. The Asian miracle was a composite product: made in America, Japan, and China. I hope that the book will help readers understand more vivi! dly the dynamism as well as the fragility of this process.

The author, Edith Terry, has spent over twenty years in Asia and has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Formerly the Tokyo bureau chief for the Globe and Mail Newspaper, she now lives in Hong Kong. In the early 1980s, she was a business consultant based in Beijing, and has a previous book on China during the early days of its economic reforms. Ms. Terry has been a correspondent for Business Week, Fortune, the Christian Science Monitor, and Far Eastern Economic Review, and contributed to a number of academic journals. She is fluent in Chinese and Japanese.

Download: