Acclaimed business journalist Studwell takes to task the predictions that China will become an economic juggernaut on the world stage in the 21st century--and instead foresees an economic crisis.

Hong Kong and Southeast Asia are home to five hundred million people, yet their economies are dominated by only fifty families whose interests range from banking to real estate, shipping to sugar, gambling to lumber. At their peak, eight of the world s two dozen richest men were Southeast Asian, but their names would not be familiar to most regular readers of "The Wall Street Journal." A complex mythology surrounds these billionaires, but in "Asian Godfathers," Joe Studwell finds that the facts are even more remarkable than the myths. Studwell has spent fifteen years as a reporter in the...