Commissioned for an advertising report on The Australian that didn’t go ahead.
Already companies investing is Asia have had to be savvy recognising whether they are working with the aggressively entrepreneurial Chinese or supposedly laid back Buddhist cultures.
Asian is a cultural melting pot in terms of race and religion. About 88 per cent of Indonesians are Muslim. In Malaysia the figure is 56 percent, Singapore 14.9 per cent and Thailand 4.6 per cent. Thailand is dominated by Buddhists (88 per cent) as is Singapore (42.5 per cent). And even though the numbers of Chinese may be a very small part of the population, they often dominate commerce.
Professor Mervyn Lewis, Professor of Banking and Finance at University of South Australia, says that the position on Islam in Indonesia has changed. He says: “If you’d gone back 20 years you’d find very few would be strict. But nowadays somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent are very strict.”
This means that Australian companies are potentially going to be investing with companies that are doing business base on principals laid down in the Koran.