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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of international development targets agreed to by members of the United Nations in 2000. The goals aim to improve many of the dimensions of extreme poverty and are to be achieved by 2015. This paper provides an overview of the issues relevant to the achievement of the MDGs in the Asia-Pacific region. The paper begins by discussing the critiques of the MDGs before assessing whether countries in the region are on track to achieve them. Issues relating to data availability and accuracy are discussed and the need to tailor the MDG targets to the special circumstances of some Asia-Pacific countries is examined. The paper proceeds by discussing the role of international assistance via international foreign development aid and non-governmental organisations in the achievement of the MDGs. The paper concludes with some policy implications for the international donor community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes of globalisation in the conventional food provision system have had widespread negative impacts on small-scale farmers. Yet, alternative food networks, which are characterised by more sustainable production/consumption practices and fairer trade relations, have increasingly been 'going global' and, in the process, have been integrating small-scale farms in the South. One such high-value export-led commodity is certified organic shrimp. International third-party certification schemes are becoming popular as a tool to verify the intangible attributes of such commodities. Using concepts of multifunctionality and agrarian change, this paper examines the implications of introducing an international environmental certification programme to a site where the 'peasantry' has been preserved and has limited integration in the global agro-food system. Drawing on a case study that examines the first certified organic shrimp production project in Vietnam, this paper concludes that the current movement towards post-productivism in the global North has potential to keep local farming practices in the global South by justifying the value of peasant-like production methods through international certification. As a result, the development path of agrarian transition might be reshaped into a form not necessarily pursuing industrialisation. This leads to the new interpretation of pre- and post-productivism beyond the North and South divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influences of Malaysia's Federation Land Development Authority (FELDA) scheme in fostering inclusive rural development. Based on the model of holistic inclusive development, the paper investigates the performance of FELDA from four perspectives: social development, industrialisation, modernisation and basic needs. The main findings of the study indicate that, to a large extent, the scheme has successfully stimulated both the social and economic development of the community. Nonetheless, establishing a strong trust, social cohesion and rapport between the public authorities and community remain the main challenges in determining the success of this state-led agenda. Moreover, keeping traditional values in the modern system will be the key principle for the sustainability of the programme if plans are made to adopt the scheme in other regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain how a number of leading electronics firms from Asian newly industrialised economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are articulated into global production networks and become major players in their respective market niches. Developing a triangular theoretical framework, I seek to explain the complex relationships between the dynamic articulation of these leading Asian electronics firms into different global production networks and their simultaneous upgrading from typical followers to market leaders. As a critique of the dominant developmental state discourse, I argue that the interplay between corporate strategies and home base advantages within the context of changing global production networks can offer a better explanation of the differentiated competitive outcomes of these Asian firms. This paper draws upon original data collected through personal interviews with top executives from leading electronics firms in the four Asian newly industrialised economies. I conclude the paper with some implications for theory and policy in relation to corporate development in Asian economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A focus on high‐tech industries has neglected the potential of low‐tech industries in regional economic policy. This paper critically assesses the application of the concept of the regional innovation system (RIS) by exploring the processes through which government policy and inter‐actor collaboration facilitate low‐tech industrial growth and development. In doing so, we conduct a qualitative case study on the batik industry in Pekalongan, the largest batik‐producing city in Indonesia. The results show that national and local government policy frameworks have played a major role in facilitating formal and informal collaboration between research and education institutions and the batik industry in Pekalongan. These collaborations contribute to creating research and learning environments that are important conditions for local innovation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vietnamese state's interaction with international capital has been influenced by the Communist Party's strategy to develop a ‘socialist market economy’ which aims to maintain the leading role of the state and its one party dominance while implementing economic reforms. This is at odds with alternatives proposed by neo-liberal institutions such as the IMF and World Bank who favour a progression towards a more fully-fledged market economy coupled with political pluralism. As a result, foreign investors and the Vietnamese government have had a turbulent relationship over the past decade stemming in large part from differing perceptions of a market economy and what foreign investment should entail. This paper depicts the principal issues that lay behind the restrictive policies toward foreign tour operators through a case study of their management and regulation in Vietnam throughout the 1990s. It is argued that foreign tour operators and Vietnamese tourism authorities perceive the role of international capital in tour operations quite differently. Over-regulation has provided little space for foreign tour businesses to operate in a manner that has met their expectations, while government policies have been intent on ensuring that profits remain in the country. This paper also illustrates how social networks undermine top-down government policy directives and allow foreign tour businesses to continue operating, albeit in a complex and insecure environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry outsourcing has become a significant feature of industrialisation in Southeast Asia. This study presents the findings of a study of smaller industrial enterprises in Northeast Thailand that outsource some of their operations to workers in rural villages. It was found that social relationships rather than formal contracts are critical in the management and spread of such outsourcing and that industries use outsourcing primarily as a flexible strategy to lower costs of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While not as bad as the loss of 80,000 manufacturing jobs in the 1980s, the loss of a further 30,000 jobs in the 1990s showed that the process of restructuring did not stop in 1990. The picture that emerges is more varied than the destruction of the earlier decade. There is certainly evidence of a lean, mean, more export-orientated group of firms that are competing internationally under the new low protection regime. On the other hand, it is clear that the process of restructuring and the removal of protection did not stop in the 1990s. There has been a sizeable loss of larger factories and a 22 per cent increase in smaller businesses, while surprisingly the level of foreign controlled enterprises has not increased significantly. In terms of manufacturing's contribution to exports there is both good and bad news. Exports of machinery, for example, increased by 518 per cent between 1989 and 1999. The bad news is that this is still only 18 per cent of total dairy exports, 29 per cent of meat, and only marginally ahead of wool exports, which have declined by 58 per cent in value between 1989 and 1999. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Try valiantly though they might, small (often island) territories cannot possibly follow the hard-and-fast logic of industrialisation marked out for them by larger economies. Instead, they have worked out for themselves an alternative resort to manufacturing industry; they have done so on the basis of a pragmatism in part derived from the handicaps imposed by the architecture of global capitalism and colonialism. This ‘hands on’ approach involves: (1) the exploitation of the rentier status of a microstate as a base or platform for ‘merchandise’; (2) the provision of goods (apart from services) for privileged export purposes, particularly aimed at captured markets (such as tourists and small state diasporas); (3) the expansion into small, knowledge-based industries; and (4) the parallel preservation of part-time small scale, cottage industry, often in relation to self employment. In all four cases, the common denominator and main argument proposed is that manufacturing in micro-states is best seen as an extension of services, rather than the other way round as is generally proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]