Browsing through a major bookstore in Kuala Lumpur some years ago, I chanced upon a book with a catchy title: World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability.

Amy Chua, the author, is a Chinese Filipino currently living in the US. She argues fervently in the book how indigenous populations the world over resent the control of the economy by a ‘market-dominant ethnic minority’. In Southeast Asia, it is the Chinese; in Latin America, the Whites (mostly of Spanish or Portuguese descent); in East Africa, the Indians; and in Russia, the Jews.

I found the book very interesting and readable, for it contains