Edward Elgar Publishing Global Production Networks and Rural Development: Southeast Asia as a Fruit Supplier to China

Bill Pritchard provides an important update on how current trade methodologies are implemented as China becomes one of the world’s largest fresh fruit importers from countries such as Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. The book also looks at their distinctive trade aspects and what can be learnt from alternative practices carried out in other countries through the use of global production networks. An in-depth analysis provides the reader with a welcome insight into existing processes from production through to export, often through informal routes, with a marketing structure providing more power to the distributors and brokers and mixed effects on the farmers. Using empirical evidence from four countries, this book explores what could, and should, be implemented in this under-researched topic to aid rural development. This will be an invaluable resource for researchers of human geography, international trade and Asian studies, particularly those with a focus on Southeast Asia and China. Review ‘This edited volume brings together a set of timely and much needed research contributions on the pattern, nature and dynamics of the exports of fresh fruit from Southeast Asian countries to China. A palette of detailed case studies jointly develop our understanding of the emerging regional organization of agricultural trade flows directed to the food market in China by revealing new and different forms of inter-firm relationships and regulatory measures compared to similar but well-researched production networks that connect the Global South to the Global North.’ About the Author Edited by Bill Pritchard, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Australia