ABSTRACT

Amid much fanfare, the ASEAN Economic Community was signed into existence in December 2015 by the grouping’s ten heads of state. This event was the final stage of a 15-year transformation, prompted by the regional economic crisis of the late 1990s. The ASEAN Economic Community entails the free movement of goods and services and the freer movement of capital and labor, and has been promoted as transforming member states into “a single market and production base, a highly competitive economic region, a region of equitable economic development, and a region fully integrated into the global economy” (ASEAN 2008).