Modern Asia is built upon a web of close relationships running between and within business and politics: the connections world.

The connections world has enormous advantages in promoting economic development, but also comes with significant social costs and fallibilities.

The article presents a general account of xenophobic discrimination in international law. It shows that the dominant grounds-based approach to addressing xenophobic discrimination as (i) racial discrimination and (ii) discrimination based on nationality or citizenship, fails to capture what is wrong about xenophobic discrimination. Likewise, the suggestion to address xenophobic discrimination via a dedicated ground like foreignness may also fail given the unique character of foreignness as in turn constructed by other grounds.