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It’s truly remarkable how, in early 2004, a global increase in accidents involving people falling down manholes became one of the first indicators of the massive boom taking place in China’s economy.

But the fact is that as the “Dragon of the East” grew as a manufacturing base, its need for raw materials, especially iron, multiplied.read more…

The word “thug” conjures up images of someone who is violent, brutish and crude, probably a bit of a nutter and, more often than not, driven by villainous intent. A network of criminal Indian gangs that favored strangling their victims before robbing them doesn’t normally spring to mind. read more…

Life is full of paradoxes for dissident Chinese author Ma Jian.
Creative exile in England allows him to write more freely about his homeland. his banned status in China boosts his sales in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and creates a sales angle for his books in English. read more…

Gazing at the wonders of Southeast Asia, through the words and experiences of an author, provides a unique opportunity to explore this diverse region. Those who write in English have particular influence in their capability to inspire the world’s biggest book buying market to venture to distant shores. However, the occidental view is not without its pitfalls.

Filtering the experiential perspective of life in Thailand and its environs, may be necessary to make a tale accessible for Western readers, but it masks many of the subtle nuances and cultural realities of life here. Moreover, it too often gives birth to the greatest of literary irritants. The stereotype.

Unfortunately for Thailand, the vast majority of fiction published on, in or about the country (in English) fails to gaze further that the bar scenes around Patpong, Nana and Soi Cowboy.

Subtle cultural nuances fly out of the window as a gaggle of old men attempt to ascend to literary stardom through fictionalized accounts of sexual exploits, crime and corruption.

The gaze falls short.

Thailand becomes renowned for one thing, sex. Thai people are reduced to amiable noodle sellers, prostitutes, bent coppers and dodgy cab drivers.

While not being a puritan or too much of a snob, it seems a pity that the old hands fall short at writing of anything other than a clichéd world dreamt up by an imagination anaesthetized by too much Mekong whiskey.

For some writers the problem of how Thais are represented in works of fiction runs deeper than their portrayal in plethora of banal Bangkok novels, as author Rattawut Lapcharoensap explains.

“So often Thai characters just seem like props for the resolution of someone else’s conflict. [In my book] I wanted Thai folks to have their own conflicts and to have a sense of humor, to be cruel to each other and to be kind to each other in ways I hadn’t seen before.”

Rattawut, 26, is probably fast becoming the most widely known Thai writer of recent times. He received a US Dollar six-figure advance for Sightseeing, his recently published collection of short stories.

Born in the USA and raised in Thailand, Rattawut studied contemporary American Literature at Cornell University in New York, and went on to do a Masters in Creative Writing. He is currently on a fellowship at the University of East Anglia, England.

While his influences are Western Sightseeing provides a unique, authentic perspective on elements of life in Thailand.

Malaysian author Tash Aw, 33, set out to settle a few literary scores of his own with his debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory (which has just been released in Asia).

He wanted to take a sledgehammer to the stereotypes of Malaysia, created by the likes of colonial author Somerset Maugham, or the more dandy Noel Coward.

“I just got fed up of this idea, this image of 1930s and 1940s Malaysia being dominated by white men in white smoking jackets. I wanted to write something that was completely different to that.

“Ninety-five percent of Malaysia had nothing to do with the world of Somerset Maugham. He wrote about a really small circle of people and that image of Malaysia has come to dominate our literary perception of the 30s and 40s there.”

Tash was born in Taipei to Malay-Chinese parents, moved to Kuala Lumpur age three, and then on to England to study at Cambridge University when he was 18.

While he says he is “100 percent Malaysian,” he admits that his book, in terms of style, is not.

“It’s one of the great parodies. All of my literary influences are American or European, but the sensibilities are Malaysian. What makes The Harmony Silk Factory unusual is that all the emotions behind it are very Malaysian.”

Tash recognizes the same dynamics in Rattawut’s work. “His book to me felt very Thai, but in terms of the techniques employed are definitely influenced by American style, which makes for a really interesting blend.”

The Harmony Silk Factory itself is a beautiful book. It follows the life of Johnny Lim through the eyes of three narrators, his son, Jasper; his wife Snow Soon; and his eccentric English friend Peter Wormwood. Each narrator gives a different perspective on Johnny: as a devious gangster; an unsatisfactory husband; a close friend caught up in pre-war anxiety, with Malaya on the brink of a Japanese invasion.

Spanning more than 60 years, from Johnny’s youth up to his death and funeral at the age of 77, the characters reveal as much about themselves as they do of Johnny through their views on him. They also provide a unique window into the country’s past as the presence of British Empire fractures, giving way to a new Asian imperial master, and as the tale comes to an end you wonder if you really know Johnny’s true character.

“That was very deliberate,” Tash says. “The idea is that you as the reader are the only one who see all sides of him.

“You have to make up your mind.”

Four times Booker Prize nominee and one time winner – Schindler’s Ark, 1982 – Thomas Keneally intelligently investigates the dehumanizing effect of transforming real people into the homogenous, singular entity of “asylum seekers” in his book The Tyrant’s Novel.

The story revolves around the protagonist Alan Sheriff, a refugee locked up in a detention centre in an unnamed country – based on Australia. It details life in his homeland – Iraq – and a task set him by the despotic ruler, Great Uncle – based on Saddam Hussein.

Speaking to IHT ThaiDay from his home in New South Wales, Australia, Keneally discusses what motivated him to write the novel. [Read more →]

Netscape. The Internet. Outsourcing. Supply-chaining. Offshoring. In-forming.

Just some of the forces that three times Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman claims are not only breaking down national barriers to trade, innovation, wealth and information. They are flattening the world.

His latest book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History Of The Globalized World In The 21st Century, is his response to what he sees as the groundbreaking dynamics that are shaking up this little geosphere we call home – thus returning us to the horizontal world that existed before the times of Columbus and Magellan.

Friedman travels through America, India, China and Japan putting forward the case for an increasingly globalized, shrinking world, one created predominantly by new communications technologies that compress time and space.

Three distinct historical eras have led to the flattened world of today, according to Friedman.

Globalization 1.0 – started when Columbus set sail in 1492, essentially opening trade between the Old World and the New World, and ended around 1800. An era characterized by the production and distribution of economic, physical and political power.

Globalization 2.0 – from 1800 to 2000, in which the world shrinks from medium size to small, with the driving force of global integration being the multinational companies which targeted global markets and labor.

Globalization 3.0 – the stage we’re supposedly in now, a 21st century shrinking of the small world to a tiny place, flattening the playing field and characterized by the newfound power of individuals to collaborate and compete globally.

This current stage is liberating 3 billion people previously unable to compete in the global economy, he says, creating a new breed of player and a new playing field at the same time.

The revelation that “the world is flat”, came to Friedman in January last year, when he was in Bangalore, India, making a documentary film about the outsourcing of American call centre jobs there. Currently 245,000 Indians are answering phones, with the US service industry steadily losing jobs to the country, $2.5 billion in 1990, $5 billion in 2003.

Friedman writes with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store, finding compelling arguments and interviews with CEOs, telecoms and the IT industry to back up his claims. He documents how numerous Asian entrepreneurs have leapfrogged their Western contemporaries by developing cost-effective, hi-tech solutions the suit the needs of the global economy.

Unfortunately, it seems the integrity of his argument failed to escape the steamroller of globalization that is supposedly flattening the world.

“Everywhere you turn, hierarchies are being challenged from below or transforming themselves from top-down structures into more horizontal and collaborative ones.”

I must have missed this one the way to work this morning, or maybe I just forgot to wear my flatvision superspecs. How, for example, are Somchai growing rice in Isaan, Thanom fishing for squid of Koh Mak, the mae baan in the MSN office on Asoke, or a significant proportion of the 3 billion “liberated”by Globalization 3.0 going to benefit, grow and develop in this flattened broadband world?

“It will take time for this new playing field and the new business practices to be fully aligned. It’s a work in progress. But here’s a little warning. It is happening much faster than you think, and it is happening globally.”

Elements of this are hard to argue with. Communications are easier, cheaper and more effective than ever before. A younger generation is arming itself with new necessary skills, and an expanding Eastern workforce of highly educated, competent knowledge-workers, that can challenge and compete with the developed world, is emerging.

Friedman is a self-confessed free-market loving technological determinist. Someone who sees our vertical command and control world being transformed into a horizontal, access-for-all environment, characterized by a generation of innovators who can connect and collaborate on a global level.

But what about those who can’t afford the technology, or simply don’t have the opportunity to work in the flat-friendly industries?

“There is almost nothing about Globalization 3.0 that is not good for capital… others will feel the pain that the flattening of the world brings about.”

Some of those who will “feel the pain”are what Friedman calls the “too disempowered”, people who live in the twilight zone between the flat world and the unlit world. “They have just enough information to know the world is flattening around them and that they aren’t really getting any of the benefits.”

I have another term for them. Excluded.

While The World Is Flat successfully catalogues the development of new technologies that will inevitably change the world in which we live, Friedman continually overstates his case. He spends too much time talking to CEOs and businessmen, when he could have asked some of the “too disempowered” what they thought. Perhaps looking at some of the 999,999 unsuccessful applicants out of the one million he cites often apply for the same job in India. Does this “flatness” only apply at an international level, while the domestic employment terrain gets ever steeper?

Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, Friedman’s puts forward a provoking, if clumsey argument, which definitely provides a good starting point for thinking about how technology is influencing our lives.

For me though, the prospect of living in a flat world has about as much appeal as going mountaineering in Holland

Almost every company talks about brand, but do they really understand what it is? Greg Lowe talks to author Martin Lindstrom and other experts on how branding can make or break your business. [Read more →]

Reform Islam. Put western governments on trial. End media censorship. Promote equal rights.

These are just some of the actions Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi says are essential in establishing global peace.

Freedom of expression and human dignity are central to her worldview and she has been battling to establish these in her homeland of Iran. However such actions have not been without their consequences. [Read more →]

In the 50 odd years since he left the catholic mission that was his childhood home, Carlos Fillipe Ximenes Belo has come a long way.

From Wailakama village on Timor’s north coast, he traveled through seminaries in Rome and Portugal, only to return to a homeland that was under the tyranny of Indonesian occupation, where his brother, uncles and cousins were being used as human shields in a government war on local resistance fighters.

This was a 25 year nightmare which eventually claimed the lives of more than 250,000 East Timorese. From the moment he was appointed Acting Bishop of Dili, East Timor in 1983, Belo was an outspoken critic of the occupation, becoming one of the important voices which forced his nation’s struggle onto the world’s agenda. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Jose Ramose Horta in 1996, for their work “towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor”. Read more…

In the 50 odd years since he left the catholic mission that was his childhood home, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo has come a long way.

From Wailakama village on Timor’s north coast, he travelled through seminaries in Rome and Portugal, only to return to a homeland that was under the tyranny of Indonesian occupation, where his brother, uncles and cousins were being used as human shields in a government war on local resistance fighters.

This was a 25 year nightmare which eventually claimed the lives of more than 250,000 East Timorese. From the moment he was appointed Acting Bishop of Dili, East Timor in 1983, Belo was an outspoken critic of the occupation, becoming one of the important voices which forced his nation’s struggle onto the world’s agenda. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with José Ramose Horte in 1996, for their work “towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor”. [Read more →]