Now, as Myanmar opens up to the world after decades
of isolation, Thai construction crews are clearing paths through the malarial
jungles in preparation for creating a gateway that underlines the movement
toward broader regional integration.
Southeast Asia has long been
divided by language, religion, historical rivalries and, farther south, the
geography of sprawling archipelagos. But the opening of Myanmar; the
construction of bridges, railways and roads on the Indochinese peninsula; and
the rise of inexpensive air travel are bringing the region’s nations closer to
the goal of standing up to the two giants of the neighborhood, India and China.
Those changes, in turn, give more credence to plans to establish a common market by 2015.
“The rest of the world seems
to be stalling,” said Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary general
of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, which is steering plans for the common market. “We
are doing quite well.”
As Asean prepares for
high-level meetings next week that will be attended by Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the ambitions for knitting Southeast Asia together
economically have never been greater.
In 2014, Communist-ruled Laos and its capitalist
neighbor Thailand, which were enemies during the cold war, are set to inaugurate
the fourth bridge built across the Mekong River in less than two decades.
Western Cambodia gets its
electricity from Thailand, and the glittering lights of Bangkok are possible,
in part, because of the natural gas that is piped in from Myanmar. And Myanmar
says it will start rebuilding its rail line to Thailand — conceived by Japan, built
by prisoners during World War II and made famous
by the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
These types of connections
“are starting to restore Southeast Asia’s position as the crossroads of Asia,”
said John Pang, chief executive
of a research organization that studies Asean and was set up by the CIMB
Group, a Malaysian banking network that operates throughout the region.
The impetus for the Asean
nations’ integration in many ways comes from the outside. Both Japan and China
have been active in financing infrastructure projects in the region, partly
because a better-connected Southeast Asia will make it easier to sell their
products — and, in Japan’s case, to link a vast network of suppliers to
Japanese-owned factories.
“This is their backyard,” Mr.
Pang said. “They want easy access, and they want it organized.”
China’s view of Southeast Asia
is more complicated. Economically, it would like to see a strong Asean, Mr.
Pang said. But on some delicate territorial issues, Beijing insists on dealing
with countries individually, in particular on the rising tensions over the competing claims in the South China Sea.
From some vantage points,
Southeast Asia barely coheres as a region.
There is an absolute monarchy, Brunei. There are also two
nominally Marxist countries, Laos and Vietnam; and a
freewheeling democracy prone to military coups, Thailand. At the geographical
extremes are Indonesia, which is
mostly Muslim and is the world’s largest archipelago, and Myanmar, largely
Buddhist, with mountains that form the foothills of the Himalayas.
But the integration of
Southeast Asia has taken on a life of its own. It more closely resembles the
European Economic Community, an early predecessor to the European Union, than
it does the current European bloc, which is struggling to reconcile its plans
for a common monetary policy with its lack of fiscal and political unity.
The treaty among the 10 member
countries of Asean is only loosely enforced, a sharp contrast with the treaties
governing the 27-nation European Union. The Asean secretariat in Jakarta,
Indonesia, employs 295 people, a fraction of the 33,000 people who work for the European Commission in
Brussels and elsewhere.
“Each member state is still
very jealous of its own sovereignty and decision-making power,” Mr. Surin said.
“My role is to implement, not to lead.”
Those who follow the progress
of Southeast Asia’s integration say the process has been more organic, less
scripted and less legalistic than Europe’s. The movement of people across
borders is the product of both the weak rule of law in the region and the
mismatch between the supply and demand for workers. People from Myanmar,
Cambodia and Laos who want to work in Thailand slip across the porous borders
or pay a bribe of about $1.50, often in full view of the immigration authorities.
An estimated two and a half
million people from those three countries have taken that route. Thailand,
having realized the value of such labor, has offered temporary working papers
to 900,000 people, but it jealously guards the path to citizenship.
Travel for the more affluent
has been transformed
by AirAsia, a low-fare carrier that was rescued from insolvency by a
Malaysian entrepreneur a decade ago. It now has 4,800 flights a week, close to
90 percent of them within Asean’s member nations.
“We have barely scratched the
surface in terms of meeting demand,” Tony Fernandes, the chief executive
of AirAsia, said by e-mail.
Multinational companies have
been among the biggest beneficiaries of Asean’s growing cohesion.
Stuart Dean, the chief
executive of General Electric Asean, a division of the global company, says it
has benefited from the economics of scale by consolidating its three light bulb
facilities into one large factory in Indonesia.
Mr. Dean describes the opening
up of Myanmar as the “most remarkable thing I’ve seen in Asean in 20 years.”
But he laments the absence of consistent standards in the region, the barriers
to trade, and the lack of integration among capital markets. “Generally
speaking, it’s two steps forward, one step backward,” he said.
Wayne Spittle, a senior vice
president at Philips, the Dutch multinational corporation, says customs
clearance is a persistent problem. Philips keeps spare parts for medical
equipment in Singapore and sends them across the region when needed. But in
countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, the parts are typically held up
for at least a week.
“You’ll often get comments
like, ‘Pay some money and you’ll get it through customs — you’ll get the order
much quicker,’ ” Mr. Spittle said. “That’s not something we do.”
The sheer notion of a region
called Southeast Asia is relatively recent.
Benedict Anderson, an expert
on nationalism who has based much of his work on Indonesia and Thailand, said
the term first started appearing in American and British scholarly journals in
the 1930s and ’40s.
“It came from academia,” Mr.
Anderson said. “When they were dividing up the world for research purposes,
Southeast Asia was a kind of residual area. It wasn’t Oceania; it wasn’t
Australia, India or China.”
Wars have divided the region
for centuries. Thailand and Burma, as Myanmar was previously known, have fought
at least 44 times. Two of those wars were for control over the area where Thai
engineers are now tracing the road through the Burmese jungles.
What Thailand could not
achieve through war it is getting in peace: relatively easy access between
Bangkok and the port of Dawei, Myanmar, on the Andaman Sea. Ultimately, the new
road will provide a shorter trade route to Europe, the Middle East and Africa
for products made on the Indochinese peninsula.
Like Southeast Asia’s
integration itself, the project is touch and go. Long-term financing is
uncertain, and Myanmar’s transition to democracy is still fragile. But
construction continues, and residents here in Phu Nam Ron, Thailand, are
already using parts of the road to reach Dawei.
And there is one indicator,
above all others, suggesting that plenty of people are betting on its ultimate
success: land in the village of Phu Nam Ron now goes for 25 times what it did
just a few years ago.
“Each time another government
minister visits,” said Apirat Sa Ngobjit, the village headman, “the price of
land goes up.”
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