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The purpose of this paper is to examine the trade relationship between China and other developing countries, analyze the regional structure and the commodity composition, and give policy advice to promote economic and trade ties between them and then investigate the trade foundation of South‐South cooperation.

The approach takes the form of a statistical and quantitative analysis of trade flows. Some creative indicators are designed to measure the competitiveness and complementarities existing between China and developing countries. The sample of the study comprises 165 developing countries excluding those newly industrialized economies such as Singapore, and South Korea.

Developing countries are very important trade partners of China as a whole and trade with them has increased relatively fast in the last ten years. The pattern of trade shows that China has a complement in trade with most of developing countries although competitiveness exists in certain countries and some products. This close trade relationship laid a solid foundation for broader practice in South‐South cooperation including foreign direct investment.

China urgently needs to build a closed connection with other developing countries. The Going Out strategy provides an opportunity for Chinese firms to capture the international market and resources, and also for other developing countries to increase their domestic capital and production capability.

The paper assesses the trade relationship between China and other developing countries from a distinct perspective: South‐South cooperation. The findings are useful for policymakers to enhance South‐South cooperation and jointly face up to the challenges brought about by globalization.

This chapter aims to investigate and interpret China’s educational aid by analyzing its history, philosophies, and practices in Africa. The study is based on review and analysis of governmental documents, reports, academic papers, and news by Chinese and foreign scholars on China’s aid, particularly educational aid to Africa. The analysis unveils three transformations of China’s aid “from pro-ideology to de-ideology,” “from single area to multiple areas,” and “from pragmatic economy driven to sustainable and humane economy focused” in Africa. Meanwhile, it indicates a continuity of the philosophy of solidarity, morality, and reciprocity in China’s South-South cooperation with African educational development.

The analysis also shows China’s educational aid does not match well with the framework of the Western donors. China, under the FOCAC framework, is devoted to higher education cooperation, human resources training program, scholarship, and Chinese language education with African partners. With the growth of its economic and political influence, China will play multiple roles as the biggest developing country and as an active promoter and provider for South-South cooperation in the negotiation and construction of the post-2015 agenda. Nevertheless, we assume China will keep a pragmatic higher education cooperation with its developing country partners to inclusively link it with business, technology transfer, and people-to-people exchange.

This study delivers a comprehensive review and analysis of paradigm shift, philosophy, mechanism, and practice of China’s educational aid to Africa to fill up the literature gap in this field. It also timely presents China’s stance toward discussion on the post-2015 agenda.

A series of “learning lab” projects on disaster risk management for sustainable development (DRM-SD) have been accomplished from 2014 to 2016 in Malaysia, Vietnam, Lao PDR and Cambodia by the Centre for Global Sustainability Studies. The project is designed for professionals from the disaster risk management field to encourage integration of sustainable development (SD) concerns into the larger planning framework for DRM. As a case study for capacity building (CB) evaluation, the central purpose of this study is to explore the approaches, feedbacks and implications of the DRM-SD CB project that have been developed and carried out.

Three methods have been used which are participation observations, surveys and document analysis. The results show that the project had successfully applied seven different tools to enhance analytical skills and professional knowledge of development practitioners in specific areas of DRM-SD.

Based on the survey, the project received positive response and valuable information from participants for future project development. Regarding the perspective of outcomes, the result indicates that south–south, ASEAN regional and triangular cooperation and role of higher education in DRM-SD are significant impacts from this project which can bring several benefits and should be promoted as an approach for the DRM-CB project as a whole.

It is hoped that this study will serve as a transfer learning initiative to provide approach guidelines and innovative mechanisms for DRM practitioners who will have the know-how and potential for leadership in DRM-SD.

The purpose of this paper is to present the policies in the field of social and solidarity economics (SSE) in India and in Brazil, to draw a comparison between them and to present their strengths and weaknesses. This proposal is based on the innovative initiative of an ongoing collaboration between India and Brazil in the field of SSE within the South-South Triangular Cooperation framework of the International Labor Organization.

The methodological procedures used for the elaboration of this article were: literature review in both countries and field trips to India and Brazil.

The study helped us understand the realities of SSE in both countries. The importance of SSE can be observed as a means to deal with poverty and the need to generate income for portions of the population, in spite of the historic, cultural, political, economic and social differences. The Indian experience contributes to the theme of the insertion of women in the mechanisms of generation of work positions and income opportunities, whereas the Brazilian experience contributes to the topic of social cooperativism.

Despite the contributions of SSE to mitigate poverty and income deficiency, considering a significant share of the poor, particularly in India, the mechanisms for inclusion of this population are limited. A similar situation, however, to a lesser degree can also be observed in Brazil.

This study is an input for the elaboration of public policies of SSE, including the advantages of its transversality.

Besides, it will also help in the analysis and elaboration of social policies from an integrated and emancipatory view.

Within the international context, the authors understand that this was the first comparative study on the topic of SSE, undertaken between Brazil and India.

India is described as an emerging donor. Actually India has started providing development assistance to developing countries immediately after independence. The amount of aid was relatively small, but grew over the years to a recognisable size. The chapter reviews the long experience of India in the framework of development assistance which is laid in the foundational principles of South-South Development Cooperation (SSDC). In the process of the review, the special features of the India’s programme, its unique character and overall prospects are highlighted. In the absence of reliable data on total and sector-wise assistance, the chapter concentrates on one major component of assistance, viz., technical cooperation a substantial part of which is devoted to training, that is, to the development of human capital. The analysis shows that given certain unique features of its aid programme, India has a great potential to emerge as a major donor country, and even to rank among big traditional donor countries. It can also influence the global aid architecture. There are many lessons that others can learn from the ‘Indian model of aid’. However, there are certain problems and challenges that India has to address for it to become a major international player in the aid business. One of the most important problems refers to the absence of detailed information. The available details on India’s assistance are sketchy and confusing; there are no detailed and consolidated statements of assistance, and it is only now a proper formal agency to coordinate all external assistance and to provide effective management in a cohesive manner has been set up. The analytical and critical account of India’s aid programme presented here is hoped to provide valuable fresh insights into the whole issue and should be of considerable academic and policy value.

The paper aims to give an account to describe the way the South‐South development programme is realized between Taiwan and Belize.

The paper is the result of ethnographic fieldwork research combined with a literature study.

The development of the newly industrialized country Taiwan can be characterized by a drastic transformation from an impoverished agrarian society towards an affluent industrial economy. Now, Taiwan is aiming to help other developing countries to walk the same path by drawing lessons from their so‐called “Taiwan experience”. In order to transfer their experience, Taiwan has established an overseas development organization, the International Cooperation and Development Fund. This organization offers development assistance to countries of which Taiwan receives political recognition. Central and South America are the regions where most of Taiwan's diplomatic ties exist. One of the recipients of Taiwanese assistance in this area is Belize, a small English speaking, Central American country in the Caribbean Sea, with a multi‐ethnic, densely populated, relatively poor population.

Future research might examine the ways in which these Taiwanese farmers have integrated in Belize and how their entrepreneurial activities contribute in this process.

After visiting Taiwan's project sites in Belize and interviewing government officials, Taiwanese‐Belizeans, Belizean farmers, and non‐farmers, it was found that much of what the Taiwanese brought was indeed considered beneficial, although incomplete. The links between the Taiwanese development organization and the wider society, Belize, were not clearly developed at the time, not least because of the problems in communicating with the Taiwanese development workers(for instance due to language issues). It would be wrong to suggest, however, that Taiwan's development project was only perceived as raising problems for it did have a positive impact.

Although the first Taiwanese project in Belize was launched in 1989 it has until recently received little attention. This paper explores the social impact of this development project from the Taiwanese in Belize.

South‐South trade is the fastest growing segment of world trade in the last two decades. This paper aims at demonstrating that it is a unique opportunity and a sound development tool for developing countries.

The paper describes the statistical and empirical evidence from a macroeconomic and microeconomic viewpoint, and discusses the policy options developing country governments face to promote South‐South trade and investment.

Not all regions, countries, products and services fare equally in the current state of play. That South‐South trade expands at a much faster pace than other trade, although it is subject to higher barriers and higher distance‐related costs, suggests that addressing trade facilitation issues is of the essence for future progress, including major investments in trade‐related infrastructure, like the modernization of air and water ports, roads, transport and customs services.

South‐South trade expansion is a market‐driven development – mostly resulting from the widespread operation of international supply chains of the South – that may be enhanced by government intervention but seldom spearheaded by it in the long run.

The “natural” next questions are whether South‐South trade can be an alternative to North‐South trade, whether the learning process for international trading is enhanced or retarded by it, and whether the proliferation of PTAs is strangulating progress in rules‐based multilateralism, the first‐best choice according to mainstream economic theory. Even more important in development terms is whether South‐South trade can help bring developing countries, small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and the poor into the export process or, rather, it is a distraction from the real targets. This paper suggests there are robust answers to these queries already.

This chapter highlights the characteristics of Asia through the analysis of policy-related documents by five donor countries, namely Japan, South Korea, China, India and Thailand. It will also examine the roles played by regional bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and ASPBAE (the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) as the horizontal channels influencing aid policies in respective countries. Together with the analysis of the national and organizational policies, the regional process of building consensus on the post-2015 agenda is examined, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC) held in August 2014.

The analysis reveals that the region has two faces: one is imaginary and the other is functional. There is a common trend across Asian donors to refer to their historical ties with regions and countries to which they provide assistance and their traditional notions of education and development. They highlight Asian features in contrast to conventional aid principles and approaches based on the Western value system, either apparently or in a muted manner. In this sense, the imagined community of Asia with common cultural roots is perceived by the policymakers across the board.

At the same time, administratively, the importance of the region as a stage between the national and global levels is recognized increasingly in the multilateral global governance structure. With this broadened participatory structure, as discussed in the chapter ‘Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’’, the expected function of the region to transmit the norms and requests from the global level and to collect and summarize national voices has increased.