Fruits of Empire?

Henry C.K. Liu hliu at mindspring.com
Fri Apr 9 21:01:30 PDT 1999


April 9 1999 LEADING ARTICLE The London Times

ASIAN ENTERPRISE

Energy and talent have turned refugees into millionaires

As newcomers to Britain, they huddled in wintry

airports and temporary reception centres,

penniless, shivering and shocked. But the 50,000

Asians expelled in 1972 from Uganda by its then

President Idi Amin have turned that tale of woe

into a dramatic success story. A list of the 200

richest Asians in Britain, published this week,

shows that the bedraggled East African refugees

of a quarter of a century ago are now, with the

Chinese community, Britain's most high-flying

ethnic minority.

The courage, talent and sheer hard work with

which Ugandan and other Asian immigrants

rebuilt their lives, in a country whose welcome

was tempered with anxiety, have proved a

blessing not only for the new millionaires

themselves but for the British economy as a

whole. Tens of thousands of jobs have been

created by expanding Asian businesses, and more

will follow. Asian enterprise, still concentrated in

the traditional food, fashion and retailing sectors,

is now moving into high-tech and hotel industries

and the media. Increasing numbers of

businesswomen are taking their place beside

businessmen. The young are taking their place

beside, or instead of, their parents; for

first-generation entrepreneurs foster an early

knowledge of management in their children by

training them in the businesses they found - then

handing them on. The merit of Asian business

strategies speaks for itself: the combined wealth

of the list's entrepreneurs is more than £7 billion.

The energy that made millionaires of a few is

fuelling a broader move towards integration and

minority achievement in modern Britain.

Non-white teenagers are now more likely than

their white counterparts to stay at school after 16;

the percentage of black and Asian Britons with

degrees is higher than that of whites.

Such achievements are all the more remarkable in

light of the racism still to be found in parts of

British society, which continues to throw up

obstacles for minorities. Black and Asian Britons

are under-represented in the police, Whitehall and

the upper echelons of the public sector. In a

country now painfully trying, in the wake of the

Stephen Lawrence inquiry, to eradicate racial

injustice, the economic success of Britain's

irrepressible Asian millionaires serves not only as

a mute reproach to the insular who once feared

their immigration. It also offers fresh evidence of

the benefits of working together to create a

genuinely multicultural society.



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