This book looks at the main factors which have contributed to the strikingly strong growth of Asian economies in the last twenty-five years. It considers the economic policies adopted to promote such growth, arguing that it will become increasingly difficult to sustain this. The author then examines the inequalities generated by economic growth, before considering the dynamics of the four different types of political system which have evolved in Asia: veiled authoritarianism; market Stalinism; emerging bourgeois democracy and elite democracy.