The Three Pillars Of ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) is a regional organization within the SCS that could peacefully moderate the territorial disputes.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): is a regional economic integration bloc that includes 10 countries located in Southeast Asia. The ASEAN represents 620 million people.

Earth is bigger than what most people think; it consists of 7 continents, 7 seas, and 196 different countries. Taking that into consideration, our earth currently is supporting over 7 billion people worldwide. That is 7 billion people who are different and individuals who share different thoughts, ideas, backgrounds, and cultures. Cultures are very unique as they are different from country to country. Some adopt cultures that society accept as the norm, while others adopt different types of cultures; cultures that not many people, especially those outside from the country, can see eye to eye and would sometimes find them rather ‘extreme’. When comparing Asian cultures and American cultures side by side, we can easily identify the many differences between the two. For one, Asian cultures are less open, more traditional and conservative in comparison to Americans. While Americans promote liberty, independence, and values individualism; Asian countries, on the other hand, are more fixated in keeping to the custom. Knowing this, it is not surprising to see Asian countries have a more rigid and structured form of society compared to the Western counterparts. The values, business structures and even priorities are different between the two and can easily be distinguished. Singapore is a good example on the contrasting differences and representation of the Asian cultures.

This paper takes a look at the King of Thailand’s philosophy of “Sufficiency Economy” which contains a Buddhist belief that stresses the middle path as a prime principle for proper conduct by all levels of the population. Its application begins from the level of individuals and families through to communities and the nation itself in terms of development and administration. Thailand was well known for its agricultural commodities and being one of the world’s top rice exporters despite being a developing country faced with challenges such as economic growth and poverty. The World Bank coined Thailand as the fastest emerging economy during the latter part of the 1980's where growth was stimulated by foreign and domestic investment and borrowing. (http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/thailand/overview). Thailand’s poverty rate fell

Trade relations between Thailand and Australia have steadily increased over the years, and the two countries recently celebrated 60 years of bilateral trade. The strong ties that exist between Australia and Thailand have been further strengthened in recent years through a series of free trade initiatives, reduced or eliminated tariffs and, prior to 2003, through the provision of Australian economic development advisors to Thailand. Despite the positive trends in commerce, Thailand has been rocked by political turmoil from time to time over the years, and student uprisings in Bangkok in particular have threatened the political stability of the country's ruling parties in ways that had short-term implications for Australians doing business in Thailand. Moreover, because it has become increasingly integrated into the global economy, Thailand has not been immune from the Great Recession of 2008. Nevertheless, the business climate in Thailand remains highly favorable in general and especially favorable for Australian companies of all types and sizes as described further below.

Another way of seeing political integration in ASEAN is to see how the ASEAN members deal with foreign entities and state. If political integration exists among ASEAN members, they will deal the problems collectively and unite under ASEAN. However, if they were to deal these issues individually as a state, there is a possibility that ASEAN had yet to manage in producing a strong political integration among is state members. One of the best scenarios that can be seen today is with regards to the claim over South China Sea (SCS) between several ASEAN members and China. From the outset, there are vast improvements on relations between China and their ASEAN counterpart mainly due to flourishing economic ties. However, within this prosperous

Topic 1: European economic and political expansion in Southeast Asia in the last quarter of the 20th century resulted in the greater integration of the region into the international economy. Six ‘new’ states emerged – Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, Indochina and Thailand.

Thailand is a potential business destination; therefore, it has massive enormous potential for development. While the country believes that business has a good impact on the society, businesses are considered as healthy for common citizens. Promoting

Although Thailand is the only country in the Southeast Asia that has never been invaded by any outside power, chaos has always been a part of Thailand political scenes for a very long time since the era of the previous Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.

In 20017-2008, the world suffers one of the most disastrous global economic crises in history. ASEAN, reeling from the financial crisis, suffered a little over a decade ago, did not escape this global phenomenon. Bolstered by numerous agreements such as the Vientiane Action Programme (VAP) in 2004, to further liberalize trade of goods and services, as well as the Enhanced Dispute Settlement Mechanism, which provide a mutually accepted framework among member states to maintain compliance in trade agreements, these efforts did not insulate the group from the global financial crisis. In spite of the ASEAN’s effort to ward off the effects of the crisis, ASEAN’s important economic endeavors were shortfalls due to their delayed implementation largely because of the flexibility and consensus principles.

From the 1960’s through the 1990’s, during what is referred to as the East Asian economic miracle period, several East Asian economies experienced unexpected high growth that was sustained for more than 20 years. The Philippines had great potential early on to become a developed country, due to an abundance of natural resources, a special relationship with the United States, a high literacy rate, a high domestic savings rate, and a promising manufacturing sector Leipzeger 448-449. However, despite these advantages, they experienced far slower growth than many of the other economies in the region. Today, they continue to face numerous obstacles to becoming a developed state.

ASEAN was officially founded in August 1967 when five founding member states jointly signed the Bangkok declaration. Since then ASEAN experienced number of threats, such as security threat in cold war, economic and financial threat in 1997 East Asia Economic crisis, and now being in the security dilemma between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, prominent major powers attempting to dominate the region, despite all the threat, ASEAN set its goal to become a community in December 2015 which has lot of potential to contribute to the world stage but it also has countless number of challenges, mainly caused by its diversities, nationalism and lack of

The presence and influence of the private sector in Southeast Asia have never been strongly felt in the present time since the market collapse in the early 2000s. Governments and regional associations scurried in saving their economies by providing massive interventions in spending and funding. Much of the crises became the woe of the public and the private sector became more averse to business. Rohde (2011) posited that “restoring of financial confidence led to a permanent transfer of losses to the public sector, as the private sector’s risk takers were bought out.” Things were further exacerbated by the failure of banks to sustain inflow of capital to the already suffering privately-owned companies at that time. All of these problems piled up and forced the world economy to spiral down. The destructive debt collapse in the West affected most businesses in the East, albeit sparingly, as the Asian Financial Crisis in the latter part of the 1990s paved the way for Asian governments to place economic safeguards in order to insulate themselves from future drastic economic downturns.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the representative of regional economic cooperation and integration among developing countries. As part of the structural changes of the world economy, ASEAN has implemented intra-regional economic cooperation since 1976. The new goal is the establishment of the ASEAN Community which consisted of three pillars; ASEAN Political-Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community, and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. Since ASEAN has also been an important axis of regional economic cooperation and free trade agreements (FTA) in Asia and Pacific’s. A big step toward realization of ASEAN

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a political organization, culture and economy in Southeast Asia. ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ASEAN should promote economic and political interests in the region when dealing with other areas of the world. ASEAN also promotes social and cultural development and regional stability. While ASEAN countries have different styles of government, ASEAN also promotes the ideals of the democratic process. Most ASEAN countries have experienced rapid economic progress and represent a very important role in this region. It was formed in 1967 from the five countries as the successor to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.