To greatly develop trade in services and realize the transition from a big trade country to a strong trade country, the 12th Five Year Plan is formulated based on Outline of the 12th Five Year Plan for National Economy and Social Development. The period of the plan is from 2011 to 2015....

This study has two closely related objectives: to evaluate post-Uruguay Round market access conditions and to contribute to a clarification of the stakes in the ongoing process of multilateral trade negotiations in the market access area. Industrial tariffs are included along with and...

This paper analyses the opportunities in services trade that may arise out of the India-ASEAN Economic Cooperation to makes an assessment of the net gains that could arise from liberalisation of the commercially traded service sector. The study suggests that at least in the medium term, there is...

The status of public services is one of the most hotly debated issues surrounding the GATS. There are two approaches to distinguish such services from any other services: an institutional approach that focuses on the legal and institutional conditions governing supply (e.g. ownership status,...

There are various conceivable links between services liberalization and poverty reduction, including the efficiency effects associated with increased competition in intermediate (infrastructural) services, income transfers generated by workers moving abroad, or the mobilization of private...

Sharp increase in house prices combined with the extraordinary lending growth in Mainland China during 2009 has led to concerns of an emerging real estate bubble. We find that, for China as a whole, the current levels of house prices do not seem significantly higher than would be justified by...

Two features of East Asia’s recovery from the financial turmoil of 1997- 98 appear to be rather paradoxical. First, the regional economies (except Hong Kong, China and Malaysia) have allowed a relatively greater albeit modest degree of variability of their currencies according to market...

This collection of 19 new essays written by civil society activists, trade unionists and other water practitioners, presents examples of ongoing struggles against water privatization and commercialization as well as inspiring examples of people-centered public water management from across Asia....

The principal constraint to raising living standards in this century will come neither from scarce resources nor limited technologies. Rather it will come from our limited capacity to discover and implement new rules—new ideas about how to structure interactions among people, such as land...

Social movements in Hong Kong have begun to challenge the law and the judicial system for the purpose of challenging government policies or at least making their claims highly visible before the public in Hong Kong. the legal boundary of the free space for social movements has been contested in...