Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurship and Capitalist Development in Southeast Asia

An ethnic minority subjected to varying forms and degrees of discrimination, the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, with its distinct type of ethnic entrepreneurship, are an indispensable component of the region's capitalist development. Constituting almost one third of the population in Malaysia, a tiny 10% in Thailand, and merely 3% and 2% in Indonesia and the Philippines respectively, Overseas Chinese enterprises dominate nearly all branches of the economy of their respective countries of residence. Certainly Overseas Chinese enterprises were dealt a severe blow from the economic crisis that swept the region in the late 1990s. However, with their proven abilities to tap needed capital coupled with their enviable reservoir of entrepreneurial know-how, as this book clearly documents, the Overseas Chinese have undoubtedly an indispensable role to play in the region's economic recovery.

Annabelle Gambe is Lecturer in Development at the German Foundation for International Development in Germany.