The Asian Insider

PART I: HOW ASIA REALLY WORKS Asian Family Connections PART II: GOVERNMENT, THE RULE OF LAW AND DEMOCRACY IN ASIA Is Democracy Always Good? Paying Peanuts: Politicians' Pay in Asia Police Corruption and the Rule of Law in Thailand Executions and Extrajudicial Killings Government Statistics and Other Lies Thaksin Berlusconi and Silvio Shinawatra The End of Indonesia PART III: SINGAPORE AND MALAYSIA Why Singapore is Different: The Babas of Singapore Reinventing Singapore? Singapore Inc. or Singapore Sink? Singapore's Thriving Sex Industry Diversity and Decency in Malaysia Rumours and Gossip in Malaysia Meet Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary PART IV: ISLAM, BUSINESS AND ASIA Allahu Akbar! in Asia Where do Asia's Muslims Fit in? Southeast Asia's Arabs Pax Islamica: Malaysia and the Middle East PART V: JAPAN, CHINA, INDIA and KOREA: ASIA'S MONOLITH ECONOMIES Land of the Setting Sun: The Inevitable Death of Japan Law, Order and China Is Booming China a Threat to Asia? Shanghai: China's FinancialCapital And Then There is Beijing The Dalai Lama eats Meat The Indian Way The World's Biggest Democracy Mumbai: India's Financial Capital India's Great Software Revolution India: Back Office to the World Stunning Korea The Insider

MICHAEL BACKMAN is an Author, Business Analyst and Columnist who specializes in Asia and Asian corporate practice. He is the author of the international bestseller, Asian Eclipse: Exposing the Dark Side of Business in Asia, which was named by The Economist as one of the sixteen finest general non-fiction books of the year. He is the co-author of Big in Asia: 25 Strategies for Business Success. He writes several regular newspaper columns on Asian business, has authored numerous articles for The Times of London, International Herald Tribune, Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review and has been quoted on Asian corporate matters in many leading publications around the world including The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Fortune and The Economist. He has lived and worked in Asia and travels widely and regularly throughout the region