YOU CAN'T KEEP a good soothsayer down. Five years ago, Jim Rohwer wrote Asia Rising. Seduced by the spectacle of an Asian economic miracle, he peered into the region's future and saw a vista of uninterrupted growth and prosperity.
By mid-1998, Asia Rising lost its place on the business bookshelves to Asia Falling, a new book by another author. Undaunted and unbowed, Rohwer is back, with Remade In America, to tell us with absolute assurance how the future of Asia will look.
Why should we listen? This is the first, and most challenging, hurdle that Remade In America has to overcome: what might be called a credibility gap. Why should readers place any faith in a forecaster who got it so wrong the last time around?
With his meticulously researched Asia Rising, Rohwer was like a lollipop lady beckoning investors to cross the region's road of opportunity. He checked the weather, he checked the road surface, he checked the wind direction, he checked the speed of oncoming cars: he just missed the huge juggernaut bearing down on him from behind.
Not that Rohwer regards any of this as a handicap. After acknowledging that Asia Rising had become the subject of much mirth, Rohwer swiftly concludes he was right all along. 'Strengths as deep and well-founded as those that had propelled East Asia to the fastest economic uplifting in history were not about to be blown away because some unimaginative bankers suddenly withdrew a lot of money they had lent without any care in the first place.'
He goes on to quote from his earlier book several times during the course of Remade In America.
