don`t -- i don`t think it should be taboo because the idea of a market-dominant minority is not to be equated with inherent entrepreneurialism. i mean, i write about market-dominant minorities who owe their market dominance to colonialism or apartheid, like the whites in south africa -- has -- there, the fact that they are, you know, a very small portion of the population, 14 percent, and have historically controlled all of the best land and all of the major conglomerates, you know, owes principally to the fact that they didn`t let the majority vote or live in humane conditions for over a century. c-span: what do you do for a living full-time? >> guest: i am a professor at the yale law school. c-span: are you a lawyer? >> guest: i -- yes, actually. i went to law school. i passed the bar, and i practiced for four years on wall street, at a major international law firm. c-span: where are you from originally? >> guest: i am -- well, i`m ethnic chinese. i was born in champagne, illinois. my parents were both born in china, but they left china with their families for the philippines when they were young children. and most of my relatives are still in the philippines. c-span: why did they leave china for the philippines? >> guest: for economic reasons around 1936, `37. they were from a poor province bafuquien (ph) -- fujian province. it`s no longer so poor. but many people from that province at that time left. they took a boat, and they headed straight and either -- and many of them went to the philippines. c-span: what years did they come over here? >> guest: well, it was -- my parents actually eloped to mit in 1961. i was born in 1962. c-span: and why champagne, illinois? >> guest: my father`s also an academic. he -- they came over for advanced degrees at mit, and then my father went to complete his ph.d. at the university of illinois, and my parents now live in berkeley, california. c-span: what are they doing now? >> guest: my father is a -- well, they`re probably watching this show. they are -- my parents -- my father is a professor at berkeley. he teaches chaos theory and travels a lot. c-span: chaos theory? >> guest: yes. c-span: what`s that? >> guest: it`s -- well, he`s an electrical engineer, but he works a lot in computers and mathematics and -- i probably shouldn`t try to explain what chaos theory is! [laughter] c-span: so you grew up -- how many years did you live in champagne? >> guest: i lived for just a few years. then i spent eight years in indiana, where my father taught at perdue. so my three sisters and i lived in indiana for eight years, and then we moved to berkeley, california. c-span: that`s my home town, as it turns out. it was just -- i didn`t know that you were from lafayette. so how long did you life in lafayette? >> guest: eight years. or seven years. c-span: and then what? >> guest: and then my father received an offer to go to berkeley, so we then moved to berkeley, california, where i spent another eight years. c-span: did you go to uc berkeley? >> guest: no. that`s where my parents wanted me to go, but i went to harvard. c-span: where`d you get your law degree? >> guest: harvard. c-span: what was that like? >> guest: well, which part of it, going -- leaving the family for... c-span: ... your parents started out in fujian province in china, and you end up at one of the top universities in the united states, both undergraduate and a law degree. hard? >> guest: i think... c-span: come easy to you? >> guest: well, we always worked hard. we always worked hard. c-span: how many are there in the family? >> guest: three younger sisters. i think -- in some ways, i think my immediate family my immediate family is probably a fairly typical immigrant story. my parents came over -- my father was from a very wealthy family, but he left all that. and my mother was not. she was from a poor intellectual family. so when they came over to the united states, they were penniless. they really had no money, no -- no heat in boston. so it was just very natural. we all -- you know, we had to work hard, and we were all good students. c-span: i can`t leave it without asking -- this subject without asking about your three sisters. what are they doing? >> guest: one is a lawyer in d.c. another is an m.d./ph.d., or actually, a post-doc at harvard. she`s a doctor and -- and a scientist. and my youngest sister lives with my parents, and she is 10 years younger than i am. she has down syndrome, and she`s the family favorite. c-span: all right, back to the book for a moment. "world on fire" -- the idea for this came when? when did you -- you know, you were talking about writing the articles, but when did you know you had a book? and this was -- doubleday bought this. >> guest: i -- i actually never imagined that it would be this kind of book. i started off just as an academic, writing academic law review articles about the relationship between market reforms, democratic reforms and ethnic conflict. so i produced three law review articles, and then i thought that i would perhaps put it together. and many people suggested that i do so, so i put together a proposal originally for oxford university press. and you know, it had -- the proposal was, you know, 3,000 pages long and had 2,000 footnotes! and through a series of coincidences -- a friend suggested that perhaps i should have an agent look at it. and -- and i have a great agent. and they suggested that -- well, actually, it was interesting. i -- they -- my agent kept asking me, is there anything personal in this? and this is only a year-and-a-half ago, before i started writing the book. and i -- answering honestly at the time, i said no. i -- no, there is nothing personal in this, because i think, for me, the whole academic project has been precisely to depersonalize everything. i`m writing about complicated and controversial subjects, so for every fact, i drop a footnote and substantiate it with empirical evidence. and the last thing i wanted is for it to be subjective and personal. but as i`ve thought about it, the book has obviously changed -- i -- as probably for every author. it`s -- of course, it`s about what i know and my own background, in a sense. c-span: you say personal because you lead right off with a story about your aunt leona. >> guest: yes. c-span: tell us the story. >> guest: in 1994 -- this is i had just started as an academic at -- as a professor at duke, and i had started to write about these issues already, but i received a phone call from my mother. i was at duke and she was in california. and she told me that my aunt, my father`s twin sister, leona -- his name is leon -- had been murdered in the philippines. she was killed by her chauffeur. and my aunt and my whole family in the philippines are part of the very, very economically dominant and entrepreneurial 1 percent chinese minority in the philippines. and her chauffeur was part of the largely impoverished, much more populous ethnic filipino majority. and so my mother told me about that. c-span: where did your aunt live? >> guest: she lived in -- by herself in a beautiful home in manila. many of my relatives still live in manila. c-span: and so how did you find out that the chauffeur killed her? and what were the circumstances? >> guest: well, there was actually no dispute. two maids immediately confessed that they had actually been accomplices. i mean, they -- it was premeditated, and a few minutes before the murder, they testified that he was sharpening the knife. and after the murder, he reported to them that their employer was dead. and the police were notified and sort of the usual things happened, but the murderer was never apprehended, and both of the maids were released. and part of this has to do with the fact that, first of all, kidnapping of ethnic chinese in the philippines is extremely common -- extremely common. and very rarely are the -- the suspects apprehended. and part of this is i think because of the intense resentment against the ethnic chinese and the fact that the police and the security forces are largely -- well, are all ethnic filipino, and they`re not that motivated. in some ways, i think there`s a lot of sympathy not necessarily for the murderer but for the circumstances that would lead people to do such things. c-span: you say in the book she was 58 at the time? >> guest: yes. c-span: and the chauffeur`s never been caught. >> guest: no. c-span: what... >> guest: i have the police report. c-span: what was the motive? >> guest: the -- well, it was interesting. the chauffeur apparently took some -- some jewels, some money, but very stark for me -- and this is probably why i open the book with this. i looked at the police report. i was very frustrated both with my family members in the philippines and the police that nothing was happening. and i asked my uncle, you know were there any developments in the murder case, and -- and the answer was no. this is -- it`s been closed. this is -- when i asked why, he said this is -- this is the philippines. it`s not america. so i actually got copies of the police report. and interestingly, under "motive," there was essentially just one word, and it was "revenge," which was striking for me because it could have been robbery, it could have been something else, but... c-span: revenge for what? >> guest: ... it was really just -- well, that`s an interesting question. i think revenge for -- my own view is it`s a combination -- revenge for feelings of humiliation and powerlessness. my -- many of the chinese filipino families have many servants, and it`s a very lopsided situation. the businesses are virtually all dominated by ethnic chinese, along with a very small sort of spanish aristocratic class. all of the peasants in the philippines are filipino. all of -- all of the maids and the servants and the chauffeurs are filipino. and when foreign investors come to do investment deals, they deal with the chinese. so i think it`s -- well, revenge is a theme of the book, i think. it`s -- it`s an act of revenge rooted in tremendous feelings of anger and envy and grievance and humiliation. c-span: what, about 60 million people in the philippines? >> guest: yes. that`s right. c-span: and 1 percent of them are chinese. >> guest: yes. c-span: what is it about the chinese that they succeed so well in that country? >> guest: well, this is a tricky question that i -- that is not the main focus of the book, but many people ask me this. first -- first of all, they`re -- it`s very complex, and i definitely do not think it is a genetic reason or necessarily even a cultural reason. groups can be market-dominant in one context and not in another. for example, the chinese in china were market-dormant for, you know, many generations under communist china. as to why the chinese are so -- the chinese minorities of all southeast asia -- i mean, even right now, burma, malaysia thailand -- i think part of it has to do with the immigrant origins, you know, that instilled a sense of hard work. part of it has to do with family and i guess cultural considerations. but in addition -- one thing i try to bring out in the book -- a lot of it is -- part of it is also favoritism. so it`s kind of circular because you have this entrepreneurial group that starts off and has disproportionate entrepreneurial skills, and often -- in the case of ferdinand marcos -- an indigenous leader will actually go into cahoots with this market-dominant minority and then engage in a symbiotic relationship, where, you know, i`ll protect you, i`ll give you these government franchises and licenses, you make a lot of money and you kick it back to me. so i guess the answer is that part of it is through -- part of the reason for the extraordinary market dominance of the children is entrepreneurialism, hard work. and i don`t know the reasons for that. but at the same time, in some cases, also it`s the legacy of colonialism and crony capitalism. c-span: do i remember you saying that the malay and the chinese do not intermarry? >> guest: that`s correct. c-span: why not? now, explain malaysia. what is it, 15 million people? i can`t remember for sure. >> guest: malaysia is much smaller than indonesia. i can`t remember. i think it`s about... c-span: i mean, indonesia`s got a couple hundred million. >> guest: that`s right. that`s right. c-span: but why not the intermarriage between the malay and the chinese? >> guest: the -- one important factor is religion. the malays -- malay majority in malaysia and the indonesian majority in indonesia are principally muslim and the chinese are not. and so one professor friend of mind from singapore was just joking, but he said it`s the pork factor, that you know muslims don`t eat pork and chinese eat pork all the time, and therefore it`s impossible to get along. and i --