ABSTRACT
The last quarter-century has seen the rapid growth of service industries as a feature of development within the broadly-defined Asia-Pacific region.1 This secular growth in services (or tertiarization) has largely been associated with market forces, demographic trends and rising incomes. But ter-tiarization within the region can also be attributed to generally increasing policy commitments at national and local government levels, notwithstanding the paramountcy of the industrialization paradigm (in the categorical sense of manufacturing-led growth and industrial labour formation as preeminent policy aspirations). Further, we can identify distinct phases of service policy approaches within the region, in response to economic shocks and experiences of industrial restructuring, changing development values and goals, and, increasingly, the pressures of globalization. This chapter will offer a framework for delineating benchmarks in the evolution of services industry policy within the Asia-Pacific, and will include examples of illustrative strategies, as well as comparative references to policy approaches among ‘Western’ jurisdictions. Given the scale and complexity of the region, and the sharp contrasts in forms of political control among constituent states, the narrative will inevitably over-simplify processes and outcomes. The (necessarily limited) intention, then, is to stimulate further discussion in this critical sphere of inquiry, and to provide a measure of context for the substantive chapters to follow.
