Put simply, it is because the region has not learned how to collect, manage and deploy its own savings effectively. Investment skills are generally not as highly rated among Asians as skills in making “things” (or making money).

Economists have long urged Asian authorities to develop better domestic capital markets and such suasion has worked up to a point. Asian stock market development has come a long way and bond markets have grown impressively. But financial intermediation is still largely in the hands of outsiders.

This is normally a subject of academic interest only, but the fear and even panic that has gripped financial markets since the coronavirus pandemic struck is forcing policymakers to confront the reality of Asia’s vulnerability to external financial shocks.

Foreign or “non-resident” capital flows of all kinds – portfolio investment in stock and bonds, direct investments in business and banking flows – to Asian and other emerging economies are all taking a hammering right now.

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This has happened before, notably during the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. But, this time, the scale of capital flight threatens to be much worse.

Since January 21, total emerging market outflows have hit US$97 billion – US$72 billion in equity and US$25 billion in debt.

Yet much of the savings that flow into those institutions for management originate within Asia itself. Instead of being invested by domestic institutions, they are placed with non-Asian investment banks, securities houses and other financial institutions.

Call this a failure of domestic intermediation or a lack of confidence in the quality of their own investment institutions. Whichever it is, it has left many Asian emerging economies highly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of external financial forces.

It is sometimes argued that in a “globalised” world (a term that sounds increasingly hollow nowadays in view of trade wars and growing economic nationalism), it does not matter where capital comes from or who manages it, as long as funds are available.

But the current financial crisis is giving the lie to such arguments. Asia arguably needs to take greater control of its own economic and financial destiny by developing better mechanisms to collect savings from the region and deploy them nearer home.

These could take the form of anything from Singapore-style government provident funds, used to finance such things as infrastructure, to sovereign wealth funds and state holdings companies or other state-owned enterprises of the kind that characterise the Chinese and Vietnamese economies.

This implies a need for more interventionist national policies and if that sounds dangerously “radical” to some, it is arguably more responsible than defending a capital market structure that seems to produce endless financial crises.

That would be the kind of scenario which could provide cover for Asian nations wishing to exert greater influence over development of their financial sectors. Though this may appear anathema to market purists, the crisis-prone nature of their financial systems is hardly a shining model.

Anthony Rowley is a veteran journalist specialising in Asian economic and financial affairs