The Malaysian Finance and Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Anwar Ibrahim, warned yesterday of social and political fallout if Asian nations failed to resolve their current economic crisis.
Speaking at a regional security conference, Mr Anwar noted that the crisis had "gone beyond mere economics" and said that "the prospect for the growth of dynamic democracies and civil society in Asia will grow dimmer."
"Unless the situation is managed wisely and resolved quickly, the social and political dimensions are going to dominate in the days ahead," he said.
Mr Anwar said he believed that the failure of Asian governments "to provide for a truly humane economy" was the root of the present crisis.
Meanwhile, in Sydney the former Australian conservative leader, Mr John Hewson, also blamed corruption and what he termed the "incestuous relationships" of some Asian governments, businesses and banks.
Mr Hewson, a former economics professor who led the conservative coalition to election defeat in 1993, said questionable relationships, bribery and corruption had left many Asian nations with "very deep-seated" structural problems.
He told ABC radio "incestuous relationship if you like, between government, business and banking" had been their way of doing business for a long time.
Mr Hewson, a business consultant with a special interest in Asia since quitting politics in 1994, said he believed the crisis would take years to resolve.
"What you are seeing now in Indonesia or Malaysia, Korea are the unbundling of this way of doing business which is going to take some time to adjust to," he said.
The "bubbles" had burst for those involved in such relationships and adjustments were being made.
But he believed the authorities in most of the countries concerned were resisting the changes that need to be made.
"It's going to be a completely different world to anything we have experienced in the post-war period."
Mr Hewson said he believed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was dealing with the crisis correctly and if the troubled Asian countries stuck to the reforms, they could once again become economic powerhouses.
In London a top analyst at Merrill Lynch, the world's biggest brokerage company, said that Hong Kong and China risk being swept away by the Asian crisis.
Predicting a "lost decade" for the region, Mr Bill Belchere, head of currency and fixed income research and strategy in Singapore, said the two markets appeared to be relatively stable. But by the middle of this year China's growth-rate could be stagnating and foreign direct investment in the country falling.
That could present a "very difficult" situation for both China and Hong Kong. The Hong Kong dollar so far has maintained its peg to the US dollar, but there is speculation that a forced devaluation of the Chinese yuan could break the link.
Mr Belchere said the Asian economies were unlikely to overcome their difficulties without debt defaults and restructuring, and supplementary aid from the IMF. Even if they did, they would then be faced with severe economic and political problems.
Strong growth would be replaced by slowing growth or recession, stable inflation by rising or even hyper-inflation, comfortable fiscal positions by eroding ones.
In Indonesia, Mr Belchere said, the US was trying to legitimise the Suharto regime by making it look as though the president was part of the solution rather than the cause of the problem. He and his family had to go as a price for over 30 years of dictatorship.
Yet Indonesia pledged to play by IMF rules yesterday, with a top official advocating a reduction in trade barriers and import taxes. His comments came as a cavalcade of US and IMF officials visited the region to assess the crisis.