ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the structural and operational characteristics of the countries of the region as target markets and to organize what is known about the countries in the Asia-Pacific region into similar environmental clusters for further exploration and analysis. The advent of the ‘Pacific Century’ is pressaged by the fact that during the first half of the 1980s there was more trade and business in and across the Asia-Pacific region than in and across the Atlantic region. The developing countries of Asia, with more than one-half of the world’s population, account for only about one-tenth of the world’s wealth and production. In terms of level of development, factor endowment, trade structure, the Asia-Pacific region is the most heterogeneous among the different regions of the world. All developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region try to control their own economic and technological future.
