Modern economic development suggests that labour force employment is an integral part critical for industrialization. Asia's recent economic development has amazed the world. In the developing countries of Pacific Asia**, the average annual growth rate in the early 1990s was 8.4 percent in real GDP against 1.6 percent for Latin America, 2.9 percent for the Middle East and North Africa, and 3.0 percent for the industrial countries. [World Bank, 1993: 28. Shibusawa (et al), 1992: 4.] The economy of the region maintains the fastest growth in the world (See Table 1). The central element of development strategy has been "open door" policy implementation (e.g. China, South Korea and Taiwan) and export-led growth, carried out by the restructuring of production (e.g. state/collective/ private sector, and foreign-invested sector), through the choice of technology, and the allocation of resources (external and internal capital, and labour) to relative labour intensive sectors and activities. [For instance, by 1989, Japan's share of total world exports was 9.4 percent, compared with the United States at 12.5 percent, while the "Four Dragons" together took 8.5 percent, and the ASEAN 2.6 percent. Shibusawa (et al), 1992:7-8.]

**[The term "Pacific Asia" as used here refers to the region covering the areas of China, Korea, the "Four Dragons" (namely south Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan), the world leading economic power -- Japan, the three Indochinese states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and the six states of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) namely Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore (one of the "Four Dragons"), among which the World Bank has regarded Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand as the three newly industrializing economic (NIEs).]

Asia faces a new challenge to environmental sustainability of economic development in the coming century. Although the changing structure of the world economy will present a new set of problems and challenges, the controversy in the relationship between development and the environment, in connection with labour force employment and its relation to poverty and natural resource degradation, has become more complex under the new development.

The focus here is on the related issues rather than the perceptions and the incidence of poverty, unemployment and employment themselves. A new concept of sustainable development is introduced, considered being useful to analyze the issues discussed in this paper.

1. Labour Force Employment and Poverty Alleviation

Full labour force employment* is a goal for many Asian nations to order to solve the problem of poverty. The reason is simple. The co-existence of unemployment and poverty forms a vicious circle. "A person without education or skills has difficulty finding work, and when he or she finds a job, it is likely to be low paying and of uncertain duration. Related to poor health are which in turn are liked to low income and joblessness" (Oshima, 1990: 44).

*[According to Wield, the official meaning of "employment", used in statistics, is "either (1) paid employment for others, or (2) self-employment performing "some work for profit or family gain". there are three major attributes of employment (the income aspect; the production aspect; and the recognition aspect). "Unemployment" means being without work, i.e. not in paid employment, nor in self-employment (performing "some work for profit for family gain") and seeking it" (1992: 56). However, Wield points out that in developing countries, "work is characterized by its complexity and diversity and, importantly, by the relationship between paid and unpaid work" (Ibid: 77).]

In Asia's industrialized societies such as Japan and the "Four Dragons", most of their poverty has been alleviated since the 1960s. The main mechanism for achieving this was sustaining full employment over long periods.

In Hong Kong, and Taiwan, later followed by South Korea and Singapore, poverty was reduced quickly after the fulfilment of full employment. Hong Kong experienced a fast leap from low paying employment, such as in construction, to better-paying employment in industry. Singapore achieved full employment through a massive public housing and infrastructure programme. In South Korea and Taiwan, China, jobs were generated by achieving a high level of agricultural and non-agricultural occupations and activities. Annual agricultural productivity increased 4.2 percent per farm workers per year in Taiwan in the 1960s, and 5.8 percent in South Korea (Oshima, 1990: 66). [Ezra F. Vogel (1990) notes that "the five societies (above) represent less than 1 percent of world's land mass and less than 4 percent of the world's population. Yet together they have become, with Europe and North America, one of the three great pillars of modern industrial world" (pp. 1-2). They have dominated in world trading, and in world's industries of textile, electronics, shipbuilding, and automobiles since the 1960s. Taiwan and South Korea have become the largest foreign currency holders in the world. Like New York and London, Tokyo and Hong Kong have also become big financial centres in the world. A significant portion of European and North American assets are controlled by citizens and companies of these five economies, which is far more the other way around. Since 1965, Taiwanese, South Korean and Hong Kong's export has increased more than a 100-fold, and Singapore's a 300-fold increase (Vogel 1990: 1-2; Yeung 1993: 5-6).]

These cases demonstrate that the technological levels have been critical in these societies, where industrialization has been rapid. Likewise, in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia in Southeast Asia, the major rural development effort to reduce the poverty was also through labour intensive works programmes -- construction of irrigation, drainage, roads, rural energy, afforestation, etc. [Unlike other countries in Asia, Malaysia's poverty level was low, due to the favourable climate for agriculture throughout the year, and a comparatively low population: farmland ratio.] Malaysia has become one of the world top ten fastest economic growth countries. Between 1970-80 Thailand rose by 6.9 percent annual growth of its GDP. The increase in its GDP even sped up to 8.6 percent between 1985 and 1992. [Yeung, 1993: 8. and The Economist, 1995: 26.] Together with Indonesia, they have been touted as the "newly industrializing economies" (NIEs).

Many developing countries in Asia have tried to promote employment generation in order to abolish poverty, but hardly with sustained success. Poverty reduction was slow and uneven (such as in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh). China, as many other developing countries, has only been able to achieve a low level of poverty alleviation (as her income per capita is still very low).

During the first period, rural economy generally achieved a drastic reduction in income differentiation through agricultural land reform and farm collectivization. Labour force employment in agriculture was relatively high, based on the dominant production structure of the people's commune system. [It has three tiers: the commune, the production brigade and the production team in which the ownership of the means of production was vested (Zhang 1992: 43).] Agricultural development strategy adopted by the Chinese Communist Party maximized labour use to increase productivity, by expanding the arable land and irrigation, extensive use of fertilizer, intensive cultivation (multiple- and inter-cropping, and deep plough, etc.). Data from Taylor shows that "average annual labour days expended per hectare in growing all major crops rose sharply between 1953 and 1978. For example, from 1953 to 1978, the labour intensity of raising rice, millet, and tobacco more than doubled; the labour intensity of growing sorghum, rapeseed, cotton, and hemp more than tripled; and the labour intensity of growing wheat, soya beans, peanuts, and sesame more than quadrupled" (1993: 277). Intensive use of labour was also shown in the large quantities of public works programmes -- rural infrastructure such as roads, irrigation canals, and dikes. Urban economy was dominated by state-owned industries, which occupied 79 percent of the urban work force. The development objective was to achieve industrialization under the state planning system. The industrial policies favoured "increasing capital intensity and labour productivity rather than expanding labour utilization"(Sabin, 1994: 945). Hence, the quality of the employment in state-owned sector was inordinarily different from that in the collective/self-employed sector, and it was intimately linked to the employees' living conditions. Employees of the state enterprises had job security, and much better wages than those who were working in the collective sector. They enjoyed social benefits including health care, housing, education and training, and pension. Because of this, they had a much higher social status and a better quality of life (Ibid).

The reinforcement of the employment motive began in 1978 when economic reforms were implemented. The Chinese government decided to transform the economy from the state planning to market orientation. A key aspect of China's new development strategy was to open the economy to the West and other more advanced regions, encourage foreign investment. This dramatic decision has allowed the evolution of different systems of ownership (collective, private, and Sino-foreign join ventures). In the early 1980s, the rural commune production system was abolished, replaced by the household responsibility system. [A contract specified a target output in farm production and the full responsibility for carrying out production was taken by the individual farm household (Zhang, 1992: 48).]

Peasants were encouraged to develop diversified production not only in agriculture but also in non-agricultural occupations. Rural employment outside agriculture grew by nearly 16 percent a year between 1980 and 1990. Rural industry has become the largest element in non-agricultural development. It employed 34.7 million of the over 97.6 million rural non-agricultural labourers by 1992 (Rai and Zhang, 1994). Apart from these new developments, urban private employment, as a non-state sector in China, is also rapidly increasing through rural to urban migration. One survey shows that by 1987 about one-quarter of the owners of private ventures in Beijing, the national capital, and a full three-quarter of their employees were from rural areas (Sabin 1994: 969). The reason behind this is that prior to 1978 the rural to urban migration was strictly controlled by governmental administrative measures, such as the household registration system and the urban grain ration system. "As such, the proportion of China's total population living in rural areas fell from 89 per cent in 1949 to only 81 per cent in 1980". [The issue of rural/urban population is complex. A separate calculation by Harry X. Wu (1994) indicates a drop from 88.3 in 1949 to 85.2 in 1978 and further to 78 percent in 1990.]   (Taylor, 1993: 282).

Asia's "open door" strategy and export-led growth, obviously indicate that development in this region is highly linked to the rest of the world, which led the rapid economic growth. There are five features of this, examined by Shibusawa. They include strong government intervention both in political stabilization and economic policy-making; the cooperative relationship of public/private sectors; foreign direct investment; open market which is due to the special character of the American politico-military umbrella in this region; and deferred gratification, which was not only to contribute to the relatively high level of employment but also to attract foreign investment due to low production costs because of low level of workers' wages (1992: 52-60).