Not true. Look at Russia, Brazil, Mexico, most of the Middle East, etc.... In general, the only thing you can do about it is leave. Few exceptions are where there are enough opportunities that it pays for everyone to benefit or where a small group of people with no resources realize that they need to band together to prosper: Singapore, scandanavian countries, Japan. Notice some of these are in Asia too?
Middle East and Russia are in Asia as far as I was told in elementary school. Looking at a world map now some 18 years later, I can see that it's accurate :). Especially for Middle East.
But I can see your point, my take is that it's predominantly happens in Asia. There are some spots of it in Europe as well. Mostly the eastern european enclaves. But they will fall eventually (or be consumed by Russia)
Asia is simply home to most of the world's population. I suspect you will see the same everywhere that's not a 1st world country (which happen to mostly be in North America & Europe).
South America, Africa, (non-EU) Eastern Europe all suffer from this kind of corruption.
Freedom of the press & internet has a lot to do with this. Indonesia's corrupt president Suharto was toppled in the 1990s only when the press started going after him. When you look at Russia and China, one thing they have in common is restricted press/internet freedom - this keeps the status quo, no change.
I'm pretty sure that the history of Suharto's fall is wrapped up in fallings out with various powerful US interests, including those with large holdings in resource mining.
The question though is what triggered freedom of the press in Indonesia but so far not China and Russia? Is it just a matter of time or Suharto misstepping? I wonder with Indonesia whether it was the pulling of support of America to puppet dictators after Communism fell?
