Southeast Asia in a New Era: Ten Countries, One Region in ASEAN

1. Southeast Asia: An Overview

01 SEA NewEra.indd 1 4/27/10 11:37:25 AM 01 SEA NewEra.indd 2 4/27/10 11:37:25 AM 3 Southeast Asia: An Overview Daljit Singh THE LAND, SEAS AND PEOPLE Lying between China and India to the north and northwest, respectively, and Australia to the south, Southeast Asia straddles 30 degrees of latitude and over 40 degrees of longitude at its widest in Indonesia. The distance from the northern tip of Aceh to the easternmost part of Papua is over 4,000 kilometres. It is as far from Mandalay to Jakarta as it is from Madrid to Moscow in Europe. Singapore to Jayapura in Papua is as far as Singapore to Shanghai. A significant part of this vast area is made up of seas, but the combined land area covers nearly 4.5 million square kilometres, which is larger than India. Southeast Asia is mostly a maritime region with waterways, islands and peninsulas forming a large part of its geography. Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore are island nations, with the first two comprising large archipelagos of thousands of islands. Malaysia has a peninsula in the west separated by a large expanse of the South China Sea from its territories on the island of Borneo. Even the three largest states of mainland or “continental” Southeast Asia — Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam — have long coastlines. Many of their people live near the coasts or on the banks and deltas of large rivers flowing south from the eastern Himalayas and the highlands of southwestern China into the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. Only Laos is landlocked. Because of its maritime character, Southeast Asia as a region cannot close itself from the outside world the way large continental powers can, and, indeed, has from its early history been open to traders from many countries. 1 01 SEA NewEra.indd 3 4/27/10 11:37:25 AM SOUTHEAST ASIA IN A NEW ERA: Ten Countries, One Region in ASEAN 4 The main sea routes between the Indian and Pacific oceans, vital for trade and commerce as well as for naval movements of the major powers, pass through narrow straits in Southeast Asia, making it a region of great strategic importance. The most important of these straits are the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Singapore, through which pass half the world’s oil and the critical energy imports of Japan, China and Korea. The other important straits are the Sunda Strait, the Lombok Strait and the Makassar Strait between Indonesian islands. Southeast Asia is rich in natural resources. It is the world’s largest supplier of natural rubber and palm oil and also has minerals, such as oil, tin, copper, gold, bauxite and natural gas. The region has a population of over 560 million, nearly half the population of China or India, but almost twice that of the third most populous country in the world, the United States. Indonesia, which accounts for two-fifths of the population of Southeast Asia, is the fourth most populous country in the world. The Philippines and Vietnam each have more people than Germany, while Thailand has as many as France or Britain. Thus, the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are not insignificant insofar as population size is concerned; most of them are large nations. The total gross domestic product (GDP) of Southeast Asia was just over US$1 trillion in 2007. While this makes it about the same size as that of India, which has double the population, it is only about 20 per cent more than the GDP of South Korea, which has less than 50 million people, and 30 per cent larger than that of Australia, which has only 21 million people. This shows that much of Southeast Asia is still part of the developing world, with much room for further development. The term Southeast Asia came to be frequently used only during the Second World War, when it referred to the region as a theatre of war. Subsequently it was accepted as a distinct geographical region. However, the label “Southeast Asia” should no more presuppose homogeneity of its constituent parts than the term Europe can be taken to imply homogeneity there. There is an enormous variety of peoples, cultures, languages, religions and political systems in Southeast Asia. Most of the world’s great religions are found here...