Valuable lessons for Western businesses can come from learning how these families came to dominate and to propel the economies of Southeast Asia. With little more than the shirts on the backs, the founders of this bamboo network typically fled China at about the time when Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Like an army of Horatio Algers, they worked hard in their new homes, saved most of what they earned and then put it all into their own businesses.