The thing that I find different in Asia is this. Outside of China and Japan, India and Indonesia, the rest of the countries are fairly small countries where these leading families are able to capture the national imagination. The aspirations of the family become the aspirations of the nation. And the nation is used to defend the interest of the family in question.

You can see this most clearly in Singapore, but you can also see it in Malaysia, where the ruling UMNO party is a mass of inter-related incestuous Malay elites. You have a Thai king and his related royalists, and the South Korean chaebol families and their retainers.

So in these countries, the ruling families cannot, by definition, ever lose their influence without a real change in the national character and aspirations. I.e. for the chaebols to completely lose their footing in Korea, Korea will have to become something other than Korea.

India and Indonesia are different, in the sense that each has a multitude of oligarchs of different ethnic, tribal, caste based backgrounds. In these countries, the oligarchs are seen as champions of their tribe, language (ie Tamil in Thiagarajar’s case) etc. In such an instance you have a small minority with fervent loyalty to their champion. While criminal acts and pervasive bad press may detract from the family’s status, unless new champions emerge these families will continue to hold sway. But competition between the various elites means that ultimately the state will have to play arbiter in disputes (read the Ambani gas feud) and hence gain supremacy.

The Japanese, with their respect for tradition, still respect the oldest of family linkages, and there are definitely members of the Diet now who are descended and more or less inherited their positions from shoguns past. They have their own way of doing things which I don’t understand most of the time, but it seems to involve strong societal restraints on aspirations, on garish displays of wealth. combined with a national vision much like the Koreans. But there definitely has been a normalization here in comparison with the other countries.

The Chinese remain a mystery. The Communist Party is a bit like the Borg, and while it takes care of its own, it definitely doesn’t like alternative power centres outside the party’s sphere of influence. So while family influence exists and is very powerful, it is often hidden under many many layers. The Chinese are attempting to build a Lee Kuan Yew style technocratic mandarinate but without a leading family, it remains to be seen whether they can pull it off in a country with 400 times the population.

It is Oliver here and am in HK, too.

Same industry as you do so if you have time, we might be able to have a catch up here in HK.

Let me know.

Thanks

Oliver