The Trouble With Tigers: The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia

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Victor Mallet. The Trouble With Tigers: The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia

THE. TROUBLE WITH TIGERS

Contents

Map

Preface

Introduction: A miracle that turned sour

ONE The rise and fall of ‘Asian values’

TWO The new democrats

THREE Sex, drugs and religion: Social upheaval in the 1990s

FOUR The day of the robber barons

FIVE Nature in retreat: South-east Asia’s environmental disaster

SIX Enemies outside and in: The ‘Balkans of the Orient’ and the great powers

SEVEN Ten troubled tigers: The nations of south-east Asia

BURMA Democracy delayed

BURMA (Myanmar)

THAILAND The smile that faded

THAILAND

LAOS No escape from modernity

LAOS

CAMBODIA The slow recovery from ‘Year Zero’

CAMBODIA

VIETNAM Victorious but poor

VIETNAM

MALAYSIA Vision 2020 and the Malay dilemma

MALAYSIA

INDONESIA Fin de régime – and end of empire?

INDONESIA

SINGAPORE Brutal efficiency

SINGAPORE

BRUNEI Sultan of swing

BRUNEI

THE PHILIPPINES Chaotic democracy

PHILIPPINES

EIGHT After the crash: The unfinished revolution

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

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The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia

VICTOR MALLET

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About the Publisher

Wild animals have had their habitats destroyed, and the survivors are hunted down so that their body parts can be incorporated into Chinese medicines and aphrodisiacs. The tiger became a symbol of the economic strength of east Asia, but these ‘tiger economies’ have few real tigers left. Likewise, the elephant has long been associated with the traditions of Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, but wild elephants are increasingly rare. There is little sentimentality about the loss of wild creatures which kill farm animals and damage crops, any more than Europeans mourned the disappearance of wolves and bears. Nor is there much concern about ‘biodiversity’. But millions of people suffer too: deforestation has contributed to soil erosion, landslides, droughts and devastating floods. The sea has fared no better than the land. Fishermen, like their counterparts in Europe and North America, have overfished their waters. They poach in their neighbours’ fishing grounds, prompting armed clashes and frequent seizures of fishing boats – and arrests of fishermen – by the governments concerned. The coastal mangrove forests where fish and shrimp once bred have been uprooted by property developers and commercial prawn farmers, while coral reefs are killed by sewage or blown apart by fishermen using dynamite to catch the few remaining fish.

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