As this working paper reveals, however, the meteoric rise of the ‘independent director’ in Asia is considerably more complex than it initially appears. Although the label ‘independent director’ has been transplanted precipitously from the US (in some cases via the UK) throughout Asia, who is labelled an ‘independent director’ (i.e., the ‘form’ that independent directors take) and what independent directors do (i.e., the ‘function’ they perform) in Asia differ significantly from the American concept of the independent director. To add to the complexity, the form and function of ‘independent directors’ varies within Asia from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. As such, in reality, there are ‘varieties of independent directors in Asia’—none of which conform to the American concept of the independent director. This challenges the widely-held assumption that ‘independent directors’ are universally similar and follow the American concept of the independent director.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2930785