How does one define "Asia"? More than half of Russia is in Asia. Is Armenia in Asia despite being Christian? Is the Philippines Asia because it's Catholic? With Japan being so face conscious and hierarchical are they "Asian"? (After all didn't they coin the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere")
Indonesia is a multi-party democracy which would be familiar with the West but Westerners can't easily deal in that country. Singapore is an effective one-party state (a concept alien to the West) but has Western standards of living and Western companies have little problems dealing there. What is Asia and what is not Asia?
The fact is nearly all Asian countries view their neighbours as rivals. There are so many cultures, subcultures, religions and nuances between each country, city, province etc, you can't just define it as one single homogeneous continent.
And Japan? Nobody outside Japan knows how to deal with that country, I'm glad that Jetstar thinks they do, and I eagerly look forward to BB's book on "How I managed to break into the Japanese market"
Which Asian countries are truly friends with each other and actually like each other? Why did Singapore get Australia and New Zealand into the ASEAN meets and made both countries' presence a regular affair?
One other lesson to learn from Asia is it is an impossibly tough continent to do business in. The two easiest places to do business in are SIN and HKG, but they are tiny city-states. Also because of the comparative ease of doing business in both cities, Western MNCs tend to pile money there, making them extremely expensive to do business in.
Oh and I can't stand it when people keep talking about Asia's exploding middle class. The simple fact is the vast majority of the population is still poor. Even if you doubled their income overnight they won't be taking 2 additional plane trips a year. The USA, despite their problems - the bottom 25% of the population can still afford to buy a plane ticket. The bottom 25% of India and China are probably wondering how to finance their next meal.
A senior executive of a large bank in Singapore once said that if Singapore's credit card minimum income (of S$30,000 income from work per year) was applied to India, less than 20 million Indians would qualify for a credit card. This is less than double the combined populations of Singapore and HK.
Wow - the number of Indians who can claim income of S$30,000 per year from work is less than the entire population of Australia! Or 1.6% of the population spread across Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Calcutta..........
Of course the middle class in Asia is growing and companies should take advantage of it. However so many companies (not just Western ones, but also Singaporean ones from experience) go into INdia and China, fail, then wonder why the 1.5b Chinese and 1.2b Indians couldn't keep them afloat.