ABSTRACT
Hung-chao Tai’s characterisation of Asia’s new rich echoes a powerful orthodoxy which is evident in the views of many business people, politicians, journalists and academics, both within and outside the Asian region. It suggests three things about the new rich of Asia: that they are superficially Western, essentially Oriental, and represent the majority of the population. While economic growth has brought material betterment and the trappings of Western affluence, Asians, according to this view, remain fundamentally rooted in a world of unchanging Oriental culture. Although few would accept the view that most Asians are newly rich, there is broad agreement, among those who espouse the sort of culturalist paradigm found in Tai’s writing, that the cultures and ethnic groups of Asia differ fundamentally from those in the West, and that they are more or less uniform and unchanging, no matter what the social inequalities or class structures within. The most common general assertion along these lines is that where Western cultures are
individualistic and conflict-ridden, Asian cultures are communitarian, familyoriented and more or less harmonious.1
