Washingtonpost.com, December 10, 2006
Fifteen years ago, it would have been impossible to identify a uniquely East Asian identity. Few Southeast Asians or Japanese had traveled to China, for instance, and almost no Chinese had left their country for tourism. The legacy of the Cold War continued to divide the region, and most nations remained reliant on the United States to solve their disputes. Asian businesses also looked West rather than East, exporting to America more than among themselves. And East Asian elites sent their children to universities in the United States and Australia, jetted to Las Vegas for holidays and bought up the latest CDs from American pop stars.
But in the mid-1990s, East Asia began to reorient its compass inward. Regional economies expanded, producing a class of younger businesspeople. These new cosmopolites grew up forging ties among East Asian corporations, building firms such as Thai agro-industrial giant Charoen Pokphand, which quietly became the largest foreign investor in China. More sophisticated Asian companies also began developing the high-tech industries that would keep Asian talent from migrating to Silicon Valley.
