This book is a product linked to a collective research project titled, “Industrial Clusters in Asia: Old Forms, New Forms”, funded by the French Ministry of Education and Research and the Region Rhône-Alpes Assembly (France) which brought together in the course of four years some twenty researchers and PhD students from France, Japan, China, Vietnam, and Thailand, under the coordination of two French research units of the University of Lyon: IAO (Institute of East Asian Studies, CNRS, ENS-LSH) and MODYS (World and Dynamics of Societies: CNRS).

An international workshop was held in Lyon from November–December 2006 where preliminary results were discussed, leading to the writing of a first, general collective book. To extend further and deepen the research on the Thai case, a complementary funding was proposed by the “Institut de Recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine” (IRASEC). The present book although integrating the issue of cluster which was at the core of the general research project it is based on takes a different approach while aiming to answer an important question for Thailand: Is its industrial development sustainable for the next decade? Most contributors were also engaged in the larger research programme, but some others have also been specifically included in because of their knowledge on relevant points that are central for Thailand but had not been given enough attention.

Before presenting the findings of this research, we would like to thank IRASEC, without which this book would not exist. We also want to express our gratitude to all persons who gave us time and helped us gather the necessary and up to date information: firms, administration executives, and university colleagues not involved in the project. They are too numerous to name here, but without them this book would not exist either. The opinions expressed in each chapter remain, however, the author's.