Building on this early inclusive expenditure to
increase productivity in agriculture and rural
development, subsequent poverty reduction
involved strong demand for unskilled and semiskilled
labour, driven by exporting labour-intensive
goods and attracting pro-trade FDI, bringing about
transfers to their technology, knowledge and skills
base. The production and trade structures in most
East Asian economies have featured continuous
upgrading of this base via active technology diffusion
and learning by doing, allowing a shift in the
comparative advantage of each country in a flyinggoose
pattern to form a dense production network of
“factory Asia” within the Asia Pacific region (Baldwin,
2012; Lin, 2011).