Word: asia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...which the mainland's once small and isolated economy became much bigger and deeply integrated into global commerce - making it more exposed to the business cycles of its big trading partners like the U.S. "The huge elephant in the China shop is the slowing global economy," says Merrill Lynch Asia economist T.J. Bond, who cites an obvious reason: China's manufacturing sector, which accounts for 43% of China's GDP, depends heavily upon sales to the West. Some 40% of China's exports go to the U.S. and Europe, and with potentially deep recessions setting in there, economists are slashing...
...Laos (he now lives in Thailand). Although he quickly grew to love its unhurried rhythms and the unfailing good humor of its people, he didn't set out to write about it. Instead, his first stab at fiction produced a dense, depressing investigation of child sex-trafficking in Asia, an issue Cotterill has also delved into as an NGO worker. That novel sold "about two copies," Cotterill says. He realized a lighter touch might prove more palatable to readers...
...years ago, much of Asia suffered an economic wipeout that makes today's crisis seem like a rounding error. In Indonesia, the currency lost over 80% of its value, long-serving dictator Suharto was driven from office and hundreds of ethnic Chinese were killed in a racist pogrom. Prices in Hong Kong slumped through five years of grinding deflation. The city's stock market dropped more than 50% while property prices fell out the window - down a staggering 70%. South Korea and Thailand suffered similar fates, with plunging currencies, collapsing companies and rising unemployment...
...Asia's crisis holds lessons for today. Most important: leadership matters. Notably, South Korea came out of the crisis far stronger than when it went in. Like in the U.S. today, the crisis swept through the country during a presidential election campaign. Kim Dae Jung, a longtime dissident who ran on a left-leaning economic platform, rocked markets with the suggestion that he might repudiate an International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue plan. But after he was elected, he not only signed up for a $57 billion IMF package, he embraced even more sweeping reforms than the IMF called...
...Mark L. Clifford is executive director of the Asia Business Council and co-author of Meltdown: Asia's Boom, Bust, and Beyond