The Asian Insider: An Introduction

Abstract

I’d just given a speech on corporate governance in Asia at a conference in Hong Kong. I had lingered too long over the question and answer session and now I was in a mad rush to get to the airport. I half ran along the pavement beneath the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong’s central district to catch the train to Chek Lap Kok Airport. I only just made the flight. But within a few hours I was in Kuala Lumpur, and having dinner with a local Chinese friend. We sat at a table on the pavement outside Devi’s Corner, a Muslim Indian restaurant in Bangsar. My friend’s mobile phone rang. He looked titillated. ‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘Someone has died,’ he said.

‘Knowledge itself is power.’

(Francis Bacon, 1597, Meditationes Sacrae)