The Dragon Network: Inside Stories of the Most Successful Chinese Family Businesses

Introduction

Overseas Chinese family businesses (OCFBs) have played an important role in the Southeast Asian economies of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. In other parts of the world, such as Australia and North America, we can also find successful family businesses founded by Chinese citizens, although their number and size are smaller than those in the Southeast Asia region.

As most Chinese family businesses come from the Southeast Asia region it is important to know some of the reasons. First, countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines are emerging markets—nations with social or business activity in the process of rapid growth and industrialization. The role of these emerging markets, together with other quickly growing markets from other countries such as Brazil, India, and China, are expected to be increasingly important in the upcoming decades. To support this rapid growth and industrialization, the contribution of these Chinese-owned businesses cannot be ignored.

Second, all countries in the Southeast Asia region are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN covers a land area of 4.46 million km2, which is 3 percent of the total land area of Earth, and has a population of approximately 600 million people, which is 8.8 percent of the world’s population. In 2010, its combined nominal GDP had grown to US$1.8 trillion. If ASEAN were a single entity, it would rank as the ninth largest economy in ...