ASEAN

ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand (and joined by Brunei in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos in 1997, Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1998) to promote political, economic, and social cooperation. With the notable exception of Singapore, these economies have been similarly lacking in capital and industry, but rich in labour and natural resources. They came to export their natural resources to Japan and the newly industrialized countries of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, while the latter responded through exporting manufactured goods and investing in their oil, mining, and forestry industries. In the late 1970s, the ASEAN countries changed their economic policy by developing low-cost, labour-intensive, and export-oriented industries with considerable success, very much as their wealthier Asian neighbours had done before them. Despite considerable success, leading to annual growth rates of 6–8 per cent, they continued to rely heavily on the export of their commodities, and were thus badly hit by the general fall in commodity prices during the 1980s. At the same time, most countries experienced considerable structural difficulties caused by mass migration from rural areas into the cities by people wanting to work in the new industries. Asean was expanded to comprise all ten South-East Asian nations by 1998, so that attention shifted to the integration of the new, poor member states into an economic free trade area. Steps taken in this direction were moderate, however, and included the creation of a free trade area for e-commerce from 2001.

http://www.aseansec.org