Already in the 1960s the four little dragons Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan started their industrialization moving steadily upwards with increasing growth rates, some of them double-digit in the 1980s. Most significant for these results has been their export-oriented growth strategy capitalizing on low labour costs and opening them up to the world market with all its benefits and pressures. Until today they have attracted quite a lot of foreign investors bringing technology and skills beside the pure capital. Thus, all four countries have reached a more sophisticated level of production and partly even developed into service and financial centres.Combining these developments with the already advanced Japan, the entire Asia-Pacific Region must be seen as an extremely dynamic area often also mentioned as the Pacific Challenge. Thus it is of high interest to examine the determinants of growth behind this challenge, behind the economic success.Because of the specific Asian dimension of the success, especially the Asian mentality, a transfer of the growth strategy can only be possible to a very limited degree. But the Asian experiences can at least be helpful to the formulation of a country related development strategy showing up generally important growth factors.The contributors to this book analyze important factors such as development planning, foreign investment, deregulation, government intervention, human capital, finance and banking (service sector), technology transfer and promotion, trade (export promotion), agriculture and regional cooperation. For this purpose experts in Science and Economics report from their experiences.

The election of Ferdinand Marcos to the presidency of the Republic of the Philippines coincided with the conclusion of the work of Vatican II in 1965; and Marcos's dictatorial policies would inevitably clash with the Vatican's call for the clergy to advocate greater social justice for the poor. In this authoritative account of the role of the Catholic Church in the recent history of the Philippines, Robert L. Youngblood traces the political engagement of the Church over the twenty years between Marcos's election and his ouster from power in 1986. Drawing upon extensive research, Youngblood explains how, although church and state professed to share the goal of improving the welfare of the poor, Marcos's economic development policies and oppressive rule created church opposition which helped accelerate the collapse of his regime. Youngblood considers the evolution of church programs from social action projects, such as the organization of cooperatives and credit unions, to the development of social justice programs that emphasized the creation of more democratic and caring communities. He examines the dynamics by which the leaders of the Philippine Roman Catholic and Protestant churches moved from a brief period of goodwill toward the Marcos dictatorship to considerable opposition by the late 1970s, as church-sponsored work among the poor was increasingly viewed by the regime as subversive. Youngblood shows that after the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr., in 1983, the deterioration of the standard of living of average Filipinos, along with Marcos's repressive policies toward the churches and other abuses in the name of national security, were factors which impelled powerful church figures to actively oppose the dictatorship. Tracing the internal deliberations of the Philippine churches as they came to take the lead in opposing human rights abuses, Marcos against the Church deepens our understanding of problematic relations between church and state. Historians and social scientists interested in the Philippines and modern Southeast Asia, historians of religion, political scientists working in comparative politics and political development, and others concerned with issues of human rights will want to read it.