World On Fire is about what Chua calls "market-dominant minorities," groups like the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews in Russia, whites in Zimbabwe and Indians in East Africa and Fiji. Market-dominant minorities control a hugely disproportionate slice of their countries' resources.
In her own home, the Philippines, she explains, the ethnic-Chinese minority maintains a far greater status than the indigenous majority. The fact that the Chinese Phillipinos maintain offland business connections, as well as a tight economic community within the Philippines, is a hotbed for envied and bitter sentiments directed at the minority.
Chua continues to other examples, Bolivia's Spanish/Indio divisions, Indonesia's Chinese Buddhist/Native Muslim populations, and others. Each maintains she says a clear line of social and economic demarcations with are further outlined by social and religious taboo.
The United States, while not tending to have a national ethnic minority per se, does have regional ethnic divisions, such as the stereotypical Korean grocers in LA, or Jewish jewellers in New York, which despite being stereotypes, she says has some truth to them. The United States, she adds, constitutes an ethnic minority on its own, with relation to the rest of the world. The US having by far more wealth per capita than the world average, and holding a large portion of the total world wealth. This desparity of wealth Chua says, is the result of hegemonial intrusions, in the form of barebones democracy, and fuels anti-American attitudes abroad, up to and including hostile reactions such as September 11, 2001.