Speaker 1: Okay, we're live. Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to
Speaker 1: William Ramsey Investigates On today's show. I have a very
Speaker 1: special guest. Her name is Kimberly k Hwong. Her last
Speaker 1: name is spelled hoa Ng, and she just published a
Speaker 1: book September sixth, twenty twenty two. Title of the book
Speaker 1: is Spiderweb Capitalism, How global elites exploit frontier markets. And
Speaker 1: we were talking kind of in the pre show I
Speaker 1: just had Hal Weizman on last month. We talked about
Speaker 1: all the kind of subterranean, maybe sketchy things involved in
Speaker 1: Delawar's kind of corporate environment. But I think this book
Speaker 1: fits in is a great kind of follow on to
Speaker 1: that discussion because it's about some dealings that maybe not
Speaker 1: as well known to the public. But this is not
Speaker 1: Kimberly's first book. She also published back in twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: a book titled Human Trafficking Reconsidered, Rethinking the Problem, Envisioning
Speaker 1: New Solutions, and also in twenty fifteen, dealing in Desire
Speaker 1: Asian Ascended Western Decline and the Hidden Currencies of Global
Speaker 1: Sex Work. And Kimberly Wang is a She is an
Speaker 1: Associate professor of sociology at the College of the University
Speaker 1: of Chicago. She's the author of the books that I
Speaker 1: just mentioned. She's also had articles that have appeared in
Speaker 1: American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Gender and Society Contexts, the
Speaker 1: Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and Sexualities, as well as articles
Speaker 1: for the BBC. And her homepage or her website is
Speaker 1: her full name, So it's Kimberlykwong dot com and I'll
Speaker 1: put that in the show notes, as long as their
Speaker 1: Twitter handle. So if you have any questions about the
Speaker 1: book or any follow on questions, you can reach out
Speaker 1: to it Kimberly Kwong. But again, the book we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today, just published September sixth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: is Spiderweb Capitalism, How Global Elites exploit frontier market. So,
Speaker 1: Kimberly Kwong, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So for people who may not have heard your name
Speaker 1: or your earlier work, can can you talk about your
Speaker 1: background and your academic career and what led you to
Speaker 1: write and put together this book Spider Web Capitalism.
Speaker 2: Sure, so, I'm a sociologist by training. I received my
Speaker 2: PhD in twenty eleven from UC Berkeley Sociology Program. And
Speaker 2: you know, I think the story of spider web capitalism
Speaker 2: emerged in somewhat of an organic way from my first
Speaker 2: book monograph book, Dealing in Desire. The first book, Dealing
Speaker 2: in Desire is a book about the sex industry in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and it's a story about how the sex industry facilitates
Speaker 2: foreign direct investment into the country, particularly FDI coming in
Speaker 2: from other more developed nations in East and Southeast Asia,
Speaker 2: so South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And it was a time of the two
Speaker 2: thousand in anate financial crisis, and the story is really
Speaker 2: about how foreign investment was coming primarily from East and
Speaker 2: Southeast as Asian nations with a very Asian style of
Speaker 2: deal brokering that was on the basis of trust and
Speaker 2: a handshake, and in a context where you know, legal
Speaker 2: contracts were not as didn't have much teeth to them,
Speaker 2: or where the legal structure wasn't you know, very sophisticated,
Speaker 2: and whether it's widespread corruption and so that book was
Speaker 2: published in twenty fifteen, and there were some questions that
Speaker 2: were unanswered in that book because I was doing an ethnography.
Speaker 2: I was an ethnography for doing an ethnography inside of
Speaker 2: hostess bars, and so I was really curious, you know,
Speaker 2: what happens outside of hostess bars, and more curious how
Speaker 2: you know, Western businessmen who are constrained by the Foreign
Speaker 2: Corrupt Practices Act do business differently in this context than businessmen,
Speaker 2: say from South Korea or China, who are not constrained
Speaker 2: by the same global laws around corruption. So, you know,
Speaker 2: it starts with a very simple story. I go to
Speaker 2: Vietnam and Me and Mars the two sites that I'm
Speaker 2: really interested in studying, Me and Mar being an even
Speaker 2: newer frontier that people were sort of chasing after at
Speaker 2: the time when Angsan Suki was elected, you know, into
Speaker 2: office at that time. And so I kind of go
Speaker 2: there and I'm doing some interviews and I realized that, oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, you know, all of these investments are managed offshore,
Speaker 2: and they're managed through offshore vehicles that are set up
Speaker 2: in Hong Kong and Singapore, and so I start to
Speaker 2: ask for the contact information of lawyers, company secretaries, accountants, bankers,
Speaker 2: all of the people that are managing these investment vehicles offshore,
Speaker 2: and I go to Hong Kong and Singapore and carry
Speaker 2: out some of the inner us and I realized that
Speaker 2: those are just subsidiaries of other entities based in the
Speaker 2: British Virgin Islands, say Shells, Panama, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And so I kind of stumble into the story of
Speaker 2: spider web capitalism, which is a story of offshoring, and
Speaker 2: it's a story of how these investments are They never
Speaker 2: go direct from from nation A to Nation B, but
Speaker 2: instead are entangled in this three D web capital web,
Speaker 2: where there are a ton of different financial professionals who
Speaker 2: helped to move money around the world through these different
Speaker 2: offshore vehicles.
Speaker 1: Right, and you break that down into two different kind
Speaker 1: of there's really the chairman and the other ones, the
Speaker 1: h n M s and the U h n wis.
Speaker 1: Can you explain those acronyms?
Speaker 2: Sure? So, you know, when I started to do this
Speaker 2: book as a sociologist, there was a time when sociologists
Speaker 2: were really interested and I think economists too, in the
Speaker 2: study of elites, and when in the study of elites,
Speaker 2: and this is you know, post two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: everyone was looking at the one percenters of the you
Speaker 2: know one percent versus ninety nine percent. And what I
Speaker 2: realized is that actually many of the people that I
Speaker 2: study are part of the one percent, but we don't differentiate,
Speaker 2: and there's a big difference between the you know one
Speaker 2: percent and the point one percent, for example. And so
Speaker 2: the way that I sort of theorized spider web capitalism
Speaker 2: is that it's these webs are social webs, and so
Speaker 2: there I kind of take an analogy of social spiders.
Speaker 2: They build out these massive webs together in community. But
Speaker 2: what I do is I differentiate between what I call
Speaker 2: big spiders and smaller spiders. So the big spiders are
Speaker 2: ultra high net worth individuals, and the smaller spiders are
Speaker 2: the high net worth individuals who sort of manage the
Speaker 2: investments or manage the money on behalf of the ultra
Speaker 2: high net worth individuals. So high net worth individuals are
Speaker 2: basically highly compensated financial professionals who kind of carry out
Speaker 2: the footwork and the investments on behalf of the ultra
Speaker 2: high networth individuals who are often invisible in these complex webs.
Speaker 2: And the high net worth individuals are the people who
Speaker 2: are often the fall people and in the face of
Speaker 2: the deal when something goes wrong, right.
Speaker 1: So you have this kind of breaking up. So the
Speaker 1: kind of lowered people are like the manager's fund managers, accountants, lawyers, bankers,
Speaker 1: and they actually have fixers too, So there's kind of
Speaker 1: this people facilitating the investment into these frontier markets.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And you kind of you had concerns about
Speaker 1: the foreign corrupt while you were investigating all this material
Speaker 1: to spiderweb capitalism. You had some bird concerns about the
Speaker 1: FCPA too, right, you had to get that trub Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So as an American researcher, I learned that I
Speaker 2: could not so as and particularly as an ethnographer, I
Speaker 2: think I really love how Whitesman's book who you mentioned,
Speaker 2: What's the matter with Delaware? And I think I just
Speaker 2: will say, you know, how Whitesman's method of research is
Speaker 2: very different from mine, and that he's looking at court cases,
Speaker 2: newspaper articles, you know, interviewing people and putting the pieces
Speaker 2: of the puzzle together. Most of what I do is
Speaker 2: interviewing people in ethnography, which is following people around to
Speaker 2: try to see them in action, and most ethnography as
Speaker 2: a method has been used to study down. It's used
Speaker 2: to study you know, sex workers, like I did for
Speaker 2: my first book, gang Members, like many people do coming
Speaker 2: out of the Chicago School of Sociology, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's not really been used very much to study elites
Speaker 2: or to study up as we call it. But what
Speaker 2: I ran into was that per the Foreign Crept Practices Act,
Speaker 2: I could not witness any you know, people carrying out
Speaker 2: bribes or any of these transactions in person. I couldn't
Speaker 2: really look at the multiple books that people had for
Speaker 2: their accounting, because that technically would make me an accessory
Speaker 2: of criminal activity. And so the way that I sort
Speaker 2: of got around that was that I would follow people
Speaker 2: and travel with people, but I wouldn't necessarily sit in
Speaker 2: with them on the meetings, but I would I would
Speaker 2: have breakfast and drinks with you know, breakfast beforehand, coffee afterwards,
Speaker 2: drinks afterwards, and try to get them to fill me
Speaker 2: in on what was happening inside. And oftentimes, when you
Speaker 2: travel with people, you spend a lot of time with people,
Speaker 2: you build trust, and they let their guard down and
Speaker 2: they are much more open to kind of what's happening
Speaker 2: with these transactions. What are some of the complicated things
Speaker 2: going on, and so I was you know, if I
Speaker 2: was not a US researcher, I don't think I would
Speaker 2: be constrained in the same ways as US and VEST were.
Speaker 2: But it definitely, you know, created barriers to the research
Speaker 2: that I think I would have been able to go
Speaker 2: deeper and see things much more firsthand if if I
Speaker 2: wasn't similarly constrained by the SCPA. Right.
Speaker 1: So, but that those are serious concerns because a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff you talk about that in your book,
Speaker 1: about the corruption or these relationships between people that may
Speaker 1: not be as firmly memorialized in a contract. But can
Speaker 1: you kind of also talk about all the like you
Speaker 1: were there for eighteen months and these two things, you
Speaker 1: traveled freely. Can you talk about the people you met
Speaker 1: and how you accruede all that ethnographic information.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So most of the people that I met, I
Speaker 2: started out, you know, primarily interviewing fund managers and the
Speaker 2: people who work in their offices, so lawyers, accountants, come,
Speaker 2: any secretaries, the people who work in with them both
Speaker 2: in their offices but also who they contract out to
Speaker 2: do some of this work. And then I, through them
Speaker 2: started to meet the people who they were courting, so
Speaker 2: and those tended to be more of the ultra high
Speaker 2: network individuals whose money is really all around the world,
Speaker 2: and who they were looking to attract investment into these
Speaker 2: new frontiers. And I will say that it's a little
Speaker 2: bit of you know, going at it at two ends,
Speaker 2: because at this time, you know, investments in the US
Speaker 2: and in this context were often seen as safe where
Speaker 2: you can you know, generally see returns of you know,
Speaker 2: five to seven percent, and the return on investment that
Speaker 2: you're seeing in these new frontiers was so high. I mean,
Speaker 2: so many people who were really interested in emerging markets,
Speaker 2: frontier markets, and with the exposure to China, people were
Speaker 2: looking for newer markets like Vietnam, and those that were
Speaker 2: in Vietnam were looking for even newer frontiers going to
Speaker 2: Me and Min and so there was sort of this
Speaker 2: matchmaking process of you know, folks from all around the
Speaker 2: world looking to you know, get exposure to or get
Speaker 2: access to these new frontiers. While at the same time
Speaker 2: you have fund managers on the ground that are looking
Speaker 2: to raise capital for investment projects in these frontiers. And
Speaker 2: so I started by interviewing, you know, just anyone who
Speaker 2: was willing to talk to me about their role in
Speaker 2: facilitating the movement of capital. I was really interested in
Speaker 2: how people shape markets, particularly markets that are new, that
Speaker 2: have weak legal institutions, where corruption is generally widespread, where
Speaker 2: relationships matter a lot, and so I was really interested
Speaker 2: in sort of how people brokeer deals. And what I
Speaker 2: came to understand is that, you know, people have a
Speaker 2: whole network of people working on various deals for them,
Speaker 2: and I was so I was really interested in, Okay,
Speaker 2: what do each of the different people do the lawyers,
Speaker 2: the company secretaries, the fund managers, what role do they
Speaker 2: play in helping to facilitate the movement of capital into
Speaker 2: these markets, and how do they sort of facilitate the
Speaker 2: movement of capital out or profits out. Which what I
Speaker 2: learned is that oftentimes the investment is made offshore and
Speaker 2: money only comes in on shore to cover the cost
Speaker 2: of operations. But a lot of the deals are set up,
Speaker 2: you know, completely offshore in Singapore, Hong Kong, and then
Speaker 2: in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, say Shells, so forth.
Speaker 1: Right, So there's this whole process. You have a section
Speaker 1: in the introductory chapters about how this offshore investment may
Speaker 1: connects to onshore vehicles. There's this whole process roadshows. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about how that works?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean most of the processes. I would
Speaker 2: say that one thing I will say is that when
Speaker 2: people talk about offshore and I think, you know, and
Speaker 2: you hear it through how Whitzman's lens, there is kind
Speaker 2: of a dirty you know, we often think of secrecy,
Speaker 2: corruption and all of that, and and what I want
Speaker 2: to be clear about is that, yes, that is all
Speaker 2: true and there. But at the same time, when you're
Speaker 2: talking about less developed economies where there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of faith in the state or in the banking or
Speaker 2: financial institutions, offshore is also a way to protect much
Speaker 2: of these you know, to protect these investments. And so
Speaker 2: the state is you know, I think many in many
Speaker 2: ways fully aware that they're the only way that they
Speaker 2: can attract four and capital is by allowing for these
Speaker 2: structures to be set up offshore. So it's so part
Speaker 2: of what spiderweb capitalism is is it's really theorizing how
Speaker 2: investors play in the gray, and what playing in the
Speaker 2: gray means is how they sort of play in the
Speaker 2: space between what is legal or illegal liicit, illicit, corrupt,
Speaker 2: you know, clean, And the argument is that we kind
Speaker 2: of think of these as binaries, when in fact they
Speaker 2: are They occur along a continuum, and people in these
Speaker 2: kind of markets are often playing in the gray. However,
Speaker 2: you know, when I talk about these structures, it's not
Speaker 2: just it's not the it's it's often not the ultra
Speaker 2: high net worth individuals who are kind of doing this
Speaker 2: dirty work. They have they sort of you know, have
Speaker 2: people or employ people who carry out this footwork on
Speaker 2: their behalf. And those are highly compensated financial professionals who
Speaker 2: carry out these investments, you know, oversee these investments and
Speaker 2: are often the face of the face of the deals.
Speaker 2: But ironically, they take home a very small percent of
Speaker 2: the profit margins on the deals while also assuming a
Speaker 2: great deal of risk. And the reason why they're willing
Speaker 2: to do that is because they still are part of
Speaker 2: you know, the top ninety percent of you know, wealth income,
Speaker 2: you know, worldwide, and so it's worth taking the risk
Speaker 2: for them because I think the dream or the goal
Speaker 2: is ultimately ultimately to become or to grow to become
Speaker 2: ultra high networth individuals, and that is something that they
Speaker 2: imagine as more possible in new frontier markets where the
Speaker 2: risk is higher, but also the return on investment is
Speaker 2: also higher when things go well.
Speaker 1: Right, And you mentioned c Right Mills and the power
Speaker 1: Lead and how does his kind of insights you reference
Speaker 1: him as a very important influence upon you. How does
Speaker 1: he play into your inquiry into spiderworth capitalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was very inspired by Sea Right Mills because
Speaker 2: I would say that, you know, c Right Mills really
Speaker 2: is one of the first sort of leading sociologists who
Speaker 2: thinks about the relationship between political and economic elites and
Speaker 2: the ways in which political and economic elites work together,
Speaker 2: uh in order to you know, they sort of like
Speaker 2: work in concert with each other. And and I think
Speaker 2: that you know, in the US, in the US side,
Speaker 2: we often think of political elites as the political sphere
Speaker 2: as separate from the economic sphere. Where the political sphere
Speaker 2: is regulating the economic sphere. There's these systems of checks
Speaker 2: and balances, and in less developed economies it's the you know,
Speaker 2: political elites who enable economic elites to sort of make
Speaker 2: their money but via you know, inside access to deals,
Speaker 2: particularly you know, state owned enterprise, you know, ones that
Speaker 2: are governed by state owned enterprises. Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, what I really liked about going
Speaker 2: back to see Mills really was the ways in which
Speaker 2: he talks about how political elites essentially provide the legal
Speaker 2: runway for economic elites to lift off of. And it's
Speaker 2: sort of and this is where playing in the gray
Speaker 2: is really important. It's just sort of how people are
Speaker 2: able to legally, you know, you know, make their money
Speaker 2: in this very legal you know, in a in a
Speaker 2: very legal fashion, with the help of political elits and
Speaker 2: so and in French, in new frontier markets. That's really
Speaker 2: it's not just the legal structure, you know, when it's legal.
Speaker 2: It's not just that you know, there's a sort of
Speaker 2: legal runway to take off on. But it's also an
Speaker 2: informal context. It's the spaces where there may be laws
Speaker 2: in place, but those laws are not necessarily enforced or
Speaker 2: heavily regulated.
Speaker 1: Right, So there's a lot of other kind of shady things.
Speaker 1: And this is it's an academic book, but you have
Speaker 1: a lot of first person stories of these individuals. You've used,
Speaker 1: you know, pseudonyms, but these players have shared their systems
Speaker 1: and you talk about Fritz and Ross in the beginning
Speaker 1: you talk about some of these other Can you talk
Speaker 1: about some of the interesting characters you met and how
Speaker 1: they play into this whole frontier market capitalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that As a sociologist, I'm just very
Speaker 2: interested in people and who are the people behind these
Speaker 2: deals and how do they make money move? And you know,
Speaker 2: Fritz and Ross are people that I introduce in chapter
Speaker 2: one of the book, and I think they're very interesting
Speaker 2: people because Fritz is a you know, forty year old,
Speaker 2: you know, US citizen who's been who has spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time in Asia, you know, and he travels
Speaker 2: back and forth between Seattle, Hong Kong, Vietnam and me
Speaker 2: and Bar and is you know, based in Hong Kong
Speaker 2: but overseas. Basically the firms investments in Vietnam and me
Speaker 2: and Bar and you know, he makes a base salary
Speaker 2: of around three hundred thousand dollars a year and in
Speaker 2: addition a bonus and so he is what I would call,
Speaker 2: you know, high net worth individual. And when I met Fritz,
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, you know, he's the he's the guy.
Speaker 2: It's it's the fund. You know, he's managing this big fund.
Speaker 2: And he said to me, oh no, no, actually Ross
Speaker 2: is the it's all it's all Ross's money, and most
Speaker 2: of it is Ross's money. And he explains to me
Speaker 2: that the fund in total has two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: million dollars. You know, fifty million comes from the small
Speaker 2: guys like like Fritz. But Ross is the one who
Speaker 2: brought two hundred million dollars to the fund, and so
Speaker 2: he's really managing in the way he sees it. He's
Speaker 2: really managing Ross's money and making decisions about where to
Speaker 2: invest in Vietnam and me and Maar that's sort of
Speaker 2: his mandate. But Ross's money is invested, you know, pretty
Speaker 2: much all over the world. You know, they have investment
Speaker 2: mandates for Russia, Africa, Ukraine, Southeast Asia, and you know
Speaker 2: the Southeast Asia fund is the one that Fritz manages.
Speaker 2: And so I think this is really a story about
Speaker 2: how all of these investments and people are are connected
Speaker 2: to one another where you know, we and you can
Speaker 2: see through this one example a simplified example of this
Speaker 2: type of three D web, right, and.
Speaker 1: So you have like this this groupted the high network,
Speaker 1: the lower level of people doing it. But there's also
Speaker 1: it has that frontier wild west connection to it because
Speaker 1: you mentioned some terms I didn't expect to see in
Speaker 1: your like resears fixers, Can you kind of talk about
Speaker 1: how some of these transactions are facilitated that are not
Speaker 1: in conformance with Western you know, legal standards.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really interesting that you asked me that
Speaker 2: because prior at the time that I was doing this research,
Speaker 2: I came on the fixers. And so fixers are in
Speaker 2: this context are people who are primarily in charge of
Speaker 2: handling the on behalf of investors, and fixers you know
Speaker 2: oftentimes also handle these bribes on behalf of the high
Speaker 2: net worth individuals, not just the ultra high net worth individuals.
Speaker 2: And so these are the people who you know, bribe
Speaker 2: judges and in lawsuits. They're the people who know who
Speaker 2: have basically relationships to the right key officials and can
Speaker 2: can anticipate problems, can ensure you know, licensing and permits
Speaker 2: will go through. So there are fixers at all different levels,
Speaker 2: I would say, right and different There's you know, dixters
Speaker 2: who do small things and fixers who do very big
Speaker 2: things depending on the investment and size of deal. And
Speaker 2: there's all different types that I go through in the
Speaker 2: book later on in the book. And I think what's
Speaker 2: really interesting is that in this market, and people would
Speaker 2: say this about China too, which is that anytime a
Speaker 2: foreign investor wants to go into these markets, they have
Speaker 2: to have a local partner. And the reason why a
Speaker 2: local partner is important, not just or communication or cultural reasons,
Speaker 2: is because the local partner usually has a relationship with
Speaker 2: the with you know, state officials in order to get
Speaker 2: things done. And it's not really actually the local partner
Speaker 2: that has those relationships. It's a local partner who has
Speaker 2: a fixer. And so there's all of these different degrees
Speaker 2: of separation that you know, keeps the ultra high and
Speaker 2: high net worth individuals sort of it creates these legal
Speaker 2: firewalls because they're not carrying they're not the ones that
Speaker 2: are carrying out the bribes. It's the fixer that's doing it.
Speaker 2: And what I think is so interesting about the way
Speaker 2: that you've framed the question is that under the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: we start to see the word fixer all over the
Speaker 2: media and all over the news. Right. We see that
Speaker 2: with Michael Cohen, it was just the word fixer. We
Speaker 2: see fixers with Russia, Ukraine and the you know, relationships
Speaker 2: under the Trump administration and Epstein, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: of Epstein as a fixer in the in the US
Speaker 2: context in some ways, right, or a type of you know,
Speaker 2: there are many different types of fixers. And so what
Speaker 2: I think, what I really like about how Weizman's book
Speaker 2: What's the Matter with Delaware, is that he really takes
Speaker 2: this back to the US, and so I allude to
Speaker 2: it at the end of my book where I say,
Speaker 2: you know, we often think of this as something that
Speaker 2: happens over there in third world economies, but Spiderweb Capitalism
Speaker 2: is a story about how these new frontier markets are
Speaker 2: actually interconnected into a web that's connected to very developed
Speaker 2: economies in the US. And actually fixers are not is
Speaker 2: not something that exists just somewhere over there in some
Speaker 2: far away place like Vietnam or me and maar the
Speaker 2: there there. They exist here in the United States, and
Speaker 2: in fact, the their role in many ways or the
Speaker 2: they're modeled after fixers in more developed economies. And many
Speaker 2: of these deals that are sort of you know, frontier
Speaker 2: market deals of front running the legal system and front
Speaker 2: running the law are also modeled after, you know, what
Speaker 2: happened in the US before regulations were put in place,
Speaker 2: and so it's almost like they're they're trying to front
Speaker 2: run regulation the regulators. There be two steps ahead of
Speaker 2: the regulators by moving to new emerging markets or new
Speaker 2: frontiers where those laws are not yet put in place.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and that's why the FCPA was put in place.
Speaker 1: And so then you just go to these newer markets,
Speaker 1: Me and Mark and these the Can you talk about
Speaker 1: the rapid change that's happened in at least those two
Speaker 1: markets in South East Asia Vietnam and me Inwa.
Speaker 2: I think that Vietnam. So at the time that I
Speaker 2: was doing the research, everyone thought that Me and Mar
Speaker 2: was going to leap frog Vietnam in terms of foreign investment,
Speaker 2: primarily because Me and Mar is an English speaking country.
Speaker 2: It is, you know, set up with the legal infrastructure
Speaker 2: that's very similar to you know, common law, British common law,
Speaker 2: whereas you know, Vietnam was much more complicated. You have
Speaker 2: it's a socialist market transitioning to a capitalist market, you know,
Speaker 2: a capitalist market based economy, but still under a socialist
Speaker 2: you know government. And so they just there was this
Speaker 2: sense at the time, I think that after the coup,
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff in me andmar has you know, stopped,
Speaker 2: slowed down or has come to a halt, and everybody's waiting, watching,
Speaker 2: waiting to see. But Vietnam is an incredible story. It's
Speaker 2: an incredibly dynamic economy. Uh, it's grown, you know, tremendously,
Speaker 2: even from the time of my first book to my
Speaker 2: second book. The the economy is incredibly dynamic. It's grown
Speaker 2: so rapidly. You now have you know, billionaires in Vietnam
Speaker 2: that didn't exist there in years prior. So this idea
Speaker 2: of smaller spiders, you know, you know, having a vision
Speaker 2: of growing to becoming ultra high net worth individuals, I
Speaker 2: think you're there already. You're you've seen that there now.
Speaker 2: And there are ultra high net worth individuals in Vietnam
Speaker 2: now who are you know have invested all over the
Speaker 2: world too, And so I think it's it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's a it's a market, and it's an economy
Speaker 2: that more people, especially with China closing up and everything
Speaker 2: that's happening in Hong Kong, have a greater have seemed
Speaker 2: to have to me a much greater appetite for Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and what what's your kind of take on the
Speaker 1: impact of this external capital on these frontier markets. As
Speaker 1: far as sociologically or ethnographically. Do you have a positive
Speaker 1: multivari view, positive, negative? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2: I think I have a very you know, multi layered view,
Speaker 2: and I think it's it's sort of I think of
Speaker 2: it as a kaleidoscope. And when you shift this kaleidoscope
Speaker 2: and look at it through various lens you have different views.
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, when I look at it
Speaker 2: through a lens of you know, post war economy, you know,
Speaker 2: following the Vietnam War, it's almost sort of like you
Speaker 2: could see this as the rise and revenge of you know,
Speaker 2: of Vietnam, and not just in terms of the you know,
Speaker 2: geopolitical way, but in terms of you know, it's economic rise.
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, as a Vietnamese American who
Speaker 2: comes from a refugee family, I remember, you know, returning
Speaker 2: to Vietnam in the nineties when it was you know,
Speaker 2: primarily you know thatched huts, and you know, you could
Speaker 2: see the ways in which the economy was devastated by
Speaker 2: the war. And if you go to Bangkok, you just think, wow,
Speaker 2: Bangkok was twenty years ahead of Ho Chi Min city,
Speaker 2: and you know, this is what happens when a country
Speaker 2: goes through a war and within a very short time.
Speaker 2: I would say that Vietnam and ho Chiman City in
Speaker 2: particular is just you know bypassed. You know, Jakarta and Indonesia,
Speaker 2: Bangkok and Thailand, and everyone is just it's it's it's rapid.
Speaker 2: And I think that I think most people look at
Speaker 2: that dynamism and that rapid growth in positive ways. Of course,
Speaker 2: you know, the sociologist in me says, look, there's winners
Speaker 2: and losers in a course. The people that are win
Speaker 2: are winning big in Vietnam, and then there are people
Speaker 2: that get left behind, you know, land dispossession and all
Speaker 2: of that. You know. For my first book, I definitely
Speaker 2: studied down and I would have I think I would
Speaker 2: have a a better picture of the unintended consequences of
Speaker 2: these capital flows. But I really have for this for
Speaker 2: Spiderweb Capitalism, have kind of left that to other sociologists
Speaker 2: and anthropologists to study because this book really I was
Speaker 2: really interested mostly in elites and mostly in you know,
Speaker 2: how they make deals. I will say that there are
Speaker 2: some you know, some stories that I have towards the
Speaker 2: end of the book that I don't want to go
Speaker 2: so deep into of you know, a group of people
Speaker 2: that were protesting because they were you know, they felt
Speaker 2: like they were you know, their land was dispossessed and
Speaker 2: they were not paid fairly for their land. And so
Speaker 2: do I do think that whenever you have this kind
Speaker 2: of rapid development, there are inevitably going to be people
Speaker 2: that lose from this and people that you know, win
Speaker 2: hugely on the whole. Though most people would say that,
Speaker 2: you know, this kind of rapid economic development has been
Speaker 2: good because it's the GDP has risen. You know, it's
Speaker 2: you just watching a country really go from frontier to
Speaker 2: becoming an emerging market.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating. I have family members who visited Vietnam
Speaker 1: and they were like, this is you know, it felt
Speaker 1: like a First World country. Yeah, some of the travel
Speaker 1: areas and things like that. So it really is remarkable. Kimberly,
Speaker 1: we were at the thirty minute mark. Is there anything
Speaker 1: you'd like to add or I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more information in this book. We've covered kind of the
Speaker 1: introductory stuff. We haven't talked about impunity, tax strategies. What
Speaker 1: would you like to add or anything I missed before
Speaker 1: we rerap this up.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that you know, it's interesting that you,
Speaker 2: I guess just riffing off of I was listening to
Speaker 2: one of your podcasts around Jeffrey Epstein and and it
Speaker 2: just I think, riffing off of some of your own interests.
Speaker 2: It just made me think about how, you know, we
Speaker 2: live in a global world where deal brokering is largely
Speaker 2: done between political and economic elites and often through you know,
Speaker 2: trust is built through the labors of and you know,
Speaker 2: women or having women around as accessories. And my first book,
Speaker 2: Dealing in Desire gets into this, but I really even
Speaker 2: with my second book, Spiderweb Capitalism, I talk about these
Speaker 2: homo erotic triangles where you know, women are often used
Speaker 2: as props and accessories to one, you know, build relationships
Speaker 2: of trust, but also to create relationships of mutual hostage
Speaker 2: or mutual potential mutual destruction. And I think that that's
Speaker 2: something that's not what we're seeing is it's increasingly not
Speaker 2: just unique to countries like Vietnam or you know, Asia,
Speaker 2: but also with Trump and Epstein all of the people
Speaker 2: that were involved in that in the US. I'm just
Speaker 2: really we're seeing it here on the US side, and
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, riffing off of some of
Speaker 2: your other work. I just one thing that I've been
Speaker 2: thinking a lot about in the aftermath of this book.
Speaker 2: The other day, my husband and I watched Tinder Swindler
Speaker 2: on Netflix, and you know, I'm just astounded by the
Speaker 2: fact that the guy was arrested and was out of
Speaker 2: jail within five months. And I just think a lot
Speaker 2: about how why is it that in the US, in particular,
Speaker 2: financial crimes seem to go I mean, you know, they
Speaker 2: just seem to go so unregulated, or I would say,
Speaker 2: like they're not criminalized in the same ways as small
Speaker 2: petty crimes. And I'm not a criminologist. I don't you know,
Speaker 2: I don't really study, you know, the sort of criminal
Speaker 2: justice system in the same way aside from reading, you know,
Speaker 2: the books that I think the general public is reading,
Speaker 2: like Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow. But I
Speaker 2: when I think about that book, I juxaposed to my
Speaker 2: book and up next to you know what Hal Weizman
Speaker 2: studies in his book What's the Matter with Delaware? I
Speaker 2: can't help but wonder, you know, if if spider Web,
Speaker 2: I mean, part of my argument is that, you know,
Speaker 2: with spiderweb capitalism, you have these systems that are very
Speaker 2: hard to take down, in part because they're not criminalized
Speaker 2: in the same way that we have, you know, this
Speaker 2: massive industrial prison complex around and I just you know,
Speaker 2: I guess I would put the question back on you
Speaker 2: looking at you know, the Epstein case, looking at other
Speaker 2: kinds of financial crimes. You know, what do you think
Speaker 2: or why do you think it is that things like
Speaker 2: you know, people the tender swindler guy and some of
Speaker 2: the people that I study largely either fly under the
Speaker 2: radar or even when they are caught, I really don't
Speaker 2: have serious consequences compared to other types of crimes that
Speaker 2: we see out there.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great question. I think it's something
Speaker 1: about this kind of new globalization environment where some of
Speaker 1: these new crimes are taking place transnationally, trans jurisdictionally, so
Speaker 1: they haven't the severity doesn't seem to be the same
Speaker 1: as it was within the particular jurisdiction. But I totally
Speaker 1: see that the similarities between these homo erotic, homosocial bonding things.
Speaker 1: That's probably call it pedosocial in Epstein's case, not all
Speaker 1: the time, but the mutual hostage. That's why though everybody's
Speaker 1: quiet about Epstein, because a lot of those people got
Speaker 1: in that same relationship, not in a frontier market capitalism,
Speaker 1: but in some ways you could say that's a frontier,
Speaker 1: you know, sociological environment, whatever went down to that island
Speaker 1: or whatever was going on. There are definitely similarities there,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. There's a lot of politicization of
Speaker 1: the law I think involved, which is why some of
Speaker 1: these people get away with light sentences and some don't,
Speaker 1: Like Epstein wasn't got a very light sentence back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. So yeah, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of questions. There's a lot of questions that add on why.
Speaker 1: And I think that, uh, there are different frontiers. So
Speaker 1: there's a frontier in Vietnam and Meanmar, but there's frontiers
Speaker 1: in all over the world that people aren't seeing whatever's
Speaker 1: going on in the Virgin Islands or maybe some of
Speaker 1: these other places where there a lot of sketchy things
Speaker 1: happened in Venezuela. So uh, it's it's there's definitely inequality,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned in your book, inequality between the actors
Speaker 1: of these wealthy, powerful people and the people who are
Speaker 1: not in that one percent. So yeah, I think so
Speaker 1: great book, really fascinating discussion. Thank you so much. The
Speaker 1: where's the best place to get Spiderweb Capitalist.
Speaker 2: Princeton University Press website, but also it will be available
Speaker 2: on Amazon, which I think is a place many people
Speaker 2: are shopping. I saw it at Target. I saw it
Speaker 2: listen at Target, So I think you know Amazon, Princeton
Speaker 2: University Press's website. I hope. I hope it's out there
Speaker 2: in many places.
Speaker 1: I think it will be. And then the best place
Speaker 1: to contact you is either Twitter or your website ww
Speaker 1: kimberlykwog dot com. Right, yes, so if anybody wants to
Speaker 1: ask you questions, they can find out there. Do you
Speaker 1: have copies of your do you sell copies of your
Speaker 1: books through your website?
Speaker 2: I do not sell copies of my book through my website,
Speaker 2: but they are there. There are links on my website
Speaker 2: for where to get them.
Speaker 1: Cool and great book, really highly recommended. Again. The title
Speaker 1: of it is Spiderweb Capitalism, How global Elites exploit frontier
Speaker 1: markets and the author is Kimberly K. Wong. Book published
Speaker 1: September sixth, twenty twenty two. Thank you so much, for
Speaker 1: your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on your show.
Speaker 1: Awesome stay there, Say There,