"Asia is vast and varied, its physical contours subject to many different demarcations. For many centuries, European chroniclers considered that Asia started at Constantinople although over time this boundary was displaced eastwards. In this book, the Asia that we are talking about starts thousands of miles east of the Bosphorus in the flat and densely populated Indus and Gangetic plains of Pakistan and India before traversing the massive and desolate highland spaces of the Himalayas and Tibet, passing into the very diverse topologies of the many Chinese provinces and at its eastern perimeter, the Koreas, before falling into the sea opposite Japan. Beneath China lie the states of South-East Asia, stretching from Myanmar and Thailand through to the Mekong basin with Vietnam curled around its outer edge, while further south stretch the elongated archipelagos of Malaysia and then Indonesia, the latter extending far in the direction of the Antipodes. Over this immense terrain, it is scarcely any wonder that disparities in climate, ecology, social and political organisation and culture are so large. Yet in recent decades, there has been a marked tendency to speak as much about regional attributes as those at a national or local level. Indeed, talk of an Asian miracle or the Asian 21st century has become a new staple"--