ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the achievements of smaller firms in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It describes the real and substantial achievements of diaspora Chinese business, on the eve of the crisis. The chapter discusses that when the financial crisis struck the countries of Asia, all kinds of short term capital, in loans, traded equity or currency holdings were halted and withdrawn. Some of the clearest data come from Malaysia, where the government policies of seeking to develop an indigenous Malay capitalism have led to the systematic collection of information on the ethnicity of capital ownership. By the mid 1990s it was becoming increasingly hard to ignore or deny the growing economic strength, confidence and transnational interlinkages of Chinese diaspora capitalism. The inaptness of theories, that stressed either the insuperable smallness and dependency of Chinese capitalism, or else its traditional, backward or 'ersatz' nature, was becoming increasingly evident during the 1990s.
