The silk road to riches: How you can profit by investing in Asia’s newfound prosperity

Chapter 1. A new middle class

That Asia can become the engine of global economic growth is a recurring concept in the relevant literature, a theory floated variously throughout the centuries without yielding tangible results. Based on a perceived inability of the region to deliver on its potential, many people—professional investors included—resist the idea that Asia can develop a sustainable, consumer-based economic growth model. Such resistance is rooted in the region’s well-documented dependence on exports to the developed Western economies. Asia, in this construct, will remain a volatile investment proxy to global economic growth, stuck in a perpetual boom-and-bust cycle.

But consider the following set of circumstances: a large population in ...