People in the West have long had a fascination with the East, with many predicting an inevitable "Asian century" marked by economic and market dominance. I have long disagreed with the consensus on China and other Asian Tigers, and others are beginning to agree. Many problems stand in the way of the "Asian century."
Japan dazzled Westerners with the speed of its recovery from the ashes of World War II. Japanese purchases of U.S. trophy properties such as the Pebble Beach golf resort in California and Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in the 1980s, on top of the leaping property and equity prices in Japan, convinced many in the West that Japan would soon take over the world.
Japan's economic decline in the early 1990s did not curb fascination with Asia. It simply shifted to the rapidly growing developing economies, the Asian Tigers. The original four, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, were later augmented by the likes of Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and, of course, China — and more recently, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh.