Word: asia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fact, it was once Indonesia that showed Asia the way out of the poorhouse. In 1980, when Deng Xiaoping was first nudging China toward the free market, Indonesia's per capita GDP was more than double China's. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Indonesia's fast-growing manufacturing sector was a magnet for foreign investment, and rural development schemes were so successful that the nation became self-sufficient in rice for the first time. The government even had ambitions to build commercial jets and cars. But since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Indonesia has been virtually marching in place...
...effectively increased the financial risk of searching for new fields. In 1998, oil companies drilled 145 exploratory wells in Indonesia; in 2007, as oil prices soared, only 39 were sunk, according to the Center for Petroleum and Energy Economics Studies in Jakarta. Once a major oil exporter and East Asia's sole member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), today Indonesia can no longer meet domestic demand without imports; Jakarta this month suspended its membership in OPEC...
...still reeling from a military coup (Thailand), another's top economic advisers are confounded by runaway inflation that's threatening much-vaunted growth (Vietnam) and the politics of a third is mired in racial recrimination (Malaysia), Indonesia - led by its first-ever directly elected President - has emerged as Southeast Asia's unlikely star...
...have to hand it to travel writers who take on huge subjects. And traversing Europe, Russia, central Asia, India, southeast Asia and Japan by various modes of transport (mostly rail), then writing a 500-page book about the journey - with detail piled upon observational detail - is pretty huge. It takes guts, and some might say a bit of hubris, even...
...Within the art world, the announcement of Hirst's Sotheby's sale did not really come as a surprise. The last few years have seen a phenomenal increase in auction prices for contemporary art. Many of the buyers come from Russia, Asia and the Middle East, where a new class of billionaire collectors has emerged. It was none other than the royal family of Qatar that briefly made Hirst the most expensive living artist at auction last year by paying $19.2 million for Lullaby Spring, one of his medicine-cabinet pieces...