ABSTRACT
In the introductory chapter of The New Rich in Asia, Richard Robison and David Goodman seem to have captured a material basis for the emerging new imagination of contemporary ‘Asia’:
It is as consumers that the new rich of Asia have attracted an interest of almost cargo-cult proportions in the West. They constitute the new markets for Western products: processed foods, computer software, educational services and films and television soaps. They are the new tourists, bringing foreign exchange in hard times. What has helped such an enthusiastic embrace of the Asian new rich is that they are emerging at a time when prolonged recession and low growth rates have depressed home markets in the West.
