Imagethief has often compared the feel of today's China with how Southeast Asia felt when he first moved there in 1995. For those of you who are more recent arrivals to the region, in 1995 the "Asian Tigers" --Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and my adopted home of Singapore-- were at their glossy and preening height. Prices were astronomical, currencies were strong, construction cranes sprouted like weeds, real estate speculation was completely out of control, hot money was sloshing in as fast as the tankers could carry it and banks were lending to every organ grinder and his monkey (especially if the monkey was connected). Everyone was rich, getting rich, or dreaming about getting rich. Taxi drivers in Singapore used to talk about their stock picks. My own first project in Singapore was a pure product of far too much money sloshing around and landing in the hands of idiots, which is why it was such a resounding disaster.

Then, in 1997 Thailand was forced to devalue it's currency amidst a financial crisis. The crisis lept from country to country like wildfire embers wafting into fresh patches of dry grass already ripe for burning. "Contagion" was the word that was commonly used, invoking images of plague. Currencies crashed around the region, growth came screeching to a halt, capital controls were instituted, and everyone took a three year breather until the Internet boom got them excited again. It was not much fun. Indonesia's government collapsed shortly thereafter, which turned out to be a good thing for Indonesia, but was rough at the time.

I am not an economist, and my impressions are shallow and anecdotal. But I was interested to see a column today from Bloomberg's William Pesek, remarking on the similarities between Southeast Asia in 1997 and China in 2006:

On the face of it, the events that slammed Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea before denting markets around the globe seem of little relevance to China. A major trigger for the crisis was Thailand's devaluation on July 2, 1997. China is almost universally thought to have an undervalued currency. It also avoided the crisis, keeping the yuan pegged in 1997 rather than devaluing it.

Yet there are some intriguing similarities between the challenges facing China today and the ones Asia confronted nine years ago. Just as with many economies in the region in 1997, investors are concerned about the quality of Chinese growth.

Lost in the hype about China's rise is the reality that much of the economic expansion is powered by public spending and by investment from abroad. In other words, there's little about China's boom that's self-sustaining. Asia was in that situation in 1997.

Do you believe it or not? I am having a great time in China and enjoying every minute of the boom. But we all know what follows a boom, and it's hard for me to shake the feeling that the ghost of 1997 is hovering above me somewhere.