When it comes to the economic achievements of ASEAN, however, the
British observer feels that he is not on such sure ground. He is
aware of the Preferential Trading Arrangements and the tariff reduc-
tions which have been introduced since the original agreement was
signed in 1977; and of the ASEAN industrial projects (although, of
course, not all of them have as yet reached the point of take-off).
There have been many references in the press and elsewhere to ASEAN
cooperation in banking, insurance, tourism, communications, shipping
and many other fields; but it is not clear how much of this is hard
fact and how much a projection for the future. Doubts are increased
by some sober statistics eg that intra-ASEAN trade only amounted to
14.9% of total ASEAN trade in 1979 (increased from 13.4% in 1976 the
year before tariff reductions started). In other words intra-ASEAN
trade is far less important for each member state than its trade with
non-ASEAN countries. The answer may well be that ASEAN is a young
organisation, as international organisations go, and that there is a certain lack of economic complementarity. Nonetheless it appears to
be developing with a certain momentum.
But whatever drawbacks it may suffer from, ASEAN's problems pale into secondary importance when we compare its position with that of the
countries of Indo-China. Exhausted by almost 30 years of war which
ended in the establishment of the communist regimes there, they should have made economic rehabilitation and political reconciliation their
main priorities - or so one would have thought. Instead, two of them
(Vietnam and Cambodia) instantly fell to bitter squabbling with each other, culminating in the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia in 1978. The third, Laos, continued to stagnate, to quarrel with its neighbour
and later to fall foul of China. The result of all this is
that the three countries are in dire economic straights and rely
Thailand
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}
/heavily
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