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Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia

Joe Studwell · 1 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia" by Joe Studwell.
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Amazon Summary
Hong Kong and Southeast Asia are home to five hundred million people, yet their economies are dominated by only fifty families whose interests range from banking to real estate, shipping to sugar, gambling to lumber. At their peak, eight of the world’s two dozen richest men were Southeast Asian, but their names would not be familiar to most regular readers of The Wall Street Journal. A complex mythology surrounds these billionaires, but in Asian Godfathers, Joe Studwell finds that the facts are even more remarkable than the myths. Studwell has spent fifteen years as a reporter in the region, and he marshals his unprecedented sources to paint intimate and revealing portraits of the men who control Southeast Asia. Studwell also provides us with a rich and deep understanding of the broader historic, economic, and political influences that have shaped Southeast Asia over the past 150 years. Asian Godfathers is a riveting and illuminating book that lifts the curtain on a world of staggering secrecy and hypocrisy, and reveals—for the first time—who the leaders of one of the planet’s most important and tumultuous markets really are, why they got to the top, and how they keep themselves there.
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
There is a lot of insight in the description of all the individual, small- and medium-scale Chinese businesses in the region, and the article is well worth reading for this reason.

However, extrapolating these observations alone is not enough to explain the emergence of a relatively closely-knit elite of powerful business moguls who have a finger in every pie and can apparently do no wrong in their respective geographic areas of operation, while seemingly being unable to capitalize on the same business acumen to successfully expand beyond the region, a question the article also brings up:

> Consider a question that I’ve been interested in for the past 10 years: what separates the Robert Kuoks, the Mochtar Riadys, the Ng Teng Fongs and the Yeoh Tiong Lays from the rest of the traditional Chinese businessmen who have graced both sides of the Malaccan Straits?

To anyone interested in some good answers to the above question, along with an extensive background discussion, I heartily recommend the book "Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia" by Joe Studwell, a well-researched study of the topic that is also captivating to read:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802143911

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