How tycoons control many Asian economies

ASIAN GODFATHERS: MONEY AND POWER IN HONG KONG AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

By Joe Studwell

Atlantic Monthly Press, $26, 352 pages

REVIEWED BY STEVE HIRSCH

“Asian Godfathers” is a superb and thoughtful book that deserves a broader range of readers than the serious policy wonks, economics fans and Asia hands likely to reach for it reflexively.

This is a book with two levels. On one level it is an explanation of how a small group of very wealthy businessmen controls the economies of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Its author, Joe Studwell, shows how these “godfathers” came to their positions of control, how they have stayed in control over the years — through and since the Asian economic crisis of the 1990s — and what effect their presence has had.

This in itself is a worthy goal. Mr. Studwell is a skilled and informed writer, and he accomplishes the task. He describes such figures as Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, whose empire has included the controlling interest in the former British trading house Hutchison Whampoa, as well as ownership of Hongkong Electric and investments in third-generation mobile phone networks; Robert Kuok, who owns commodities, shipping and hotel businesses, and who has operated out of Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong; and Dhanin Chearavanont, who built his CP Group into the largest agribusiness in Thailand.

On the book’s second level, Mr. Studwell uses the godfathers as the key to tell the story of these countries’ economies in the decades after World War II, European colonialism and the Cold War. This is the real value — the story is a very interesting one, and it makes this book far more absorbing than a highbrow tell-all about the godfathers would be.

Mr. Studwell states at the outset that he does not mean to demean these tycoons. He also wants to avoid past analyses’ fawning admiration for, or crude condemnations of, the godfathers, and he does. Instead he analyzes this phenomenon in a cogent, thoughtful and informative way.

It is clear from the structure and style of this book that Mr. Studwell did a great deal of research and wants to present it intelligently, but in a way that will attract and retain a spectrum of thoughtful readers.

A lazier writer might have just picked a few godfathers, written a chapter on each and strung them together before ending with some thoughtful or not-so-thoughtful conclusions. Such a book would have nowhere near the value of this volume.

Mr. Studwell goes out of his way to provide the pre-colonial and colonial Southeast Asian historical context. The section is particularly well written, including such nuggets as a description of the late 19th-century, globalization-driven boom in the region, partly brought on by demand for Southeast Asian commodities, the opening of the Suez Canal and development of steamships.

There are witty moments as well. Mr. Studwell peppers his prose with interesting anecdotes, does not shy away from the seedy side of Asian politics and business, and is clever in his selection of the occasional quote. You have to give credit to someone who, in a book of this nature, finds room for an exchange Ernest Hemingway claimed to have had with F. Scott Fitzgerald, not to mention quotes from James Baldwin, Thomas Jefferson and Willy Sutton.

These touches of lightness are neither a crutch for poor journalism nor a mask for sloppy analysis.

There are a few patches where readers not oriented toward economics may find themselves a little over their heads, but an occasional challenge is infinitely preferable to an analysis so dumbed down it loses its value.

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