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Southeast Asian architecture, buildings of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Most of Southeast Asia’s great temples were built by the 13th century. The Indian royal temple, which dominated Southeast Asian culture, typically stood on a terraced plinth, upon which towered shrines could multiply. Construction was ideally of stone but could be brick sculpted with stucco. Exteriors displayed carved rhythmic moldings and figures. In about 770 the Javanese Shailendra dynasty began its series of superb stonecut monuments, culminating in the huge Mahayana Buddhist Borobudur and the Hindu Lara Jonggrang (c. 900–930). About 800 the Cambodian king Jayavarman II built a brick mountain for a temple group. This plan was furthered when foundations were laid for Angkor, a scheme based on a grid of reservoirs and canals. Successive kings built more temple mountains there, culminating in Angkor Wat. Among Southeast Asia’s most impressive sites is the city of Pagan in Myanmar, with many brick and stucco Buddhist temples and stupas built 1056–1287. Burmese stupas (e.g., Shwe Dagon Pagoda) typically have a spreading, bell-shaped base topped by a dome and pointed spire. The many monasteries of Myanmar and Thailand, like those of Laos and Vietnam, have been repeatedly enlarged and rebuilt. The architecture of the modified Hinduism of Bali is vigorously fantastical, with gilt paint and coloured glass.

People of Southeast Asia By the late 20th century, Southeast Asia’s population (including Indonesia and the Philippines) was approaching a half billion, or about one-twelfth of the world’s total. This population, however, was unevenly distributed within the region. By far the nation with the largest population was Indonesia, with about two-fifths of the regional total; in contrast, Brunei’s population was only a tiny fraction of that. Nearly half of the regional population was accounted for by the mainland states, with Vietnam and Thailand being the most populous. Settlement patterns Southeast Asia is predominantly rural: three-fourths of the people live in nonurban areas. Moreover, population is heavily clustered in fertile river valleys and especially in delta areas, such as those of the Mekong and Irrawaddy rivers. Historical, cultural, and environmental influences also have affected the settlement patterns. Java and other core areas such as the Bangkok (Thailand), Hanoi, and Manila metropolitan areas contain high population densities. While the rate of urbanization in Southeast Asia is relatively low compared with those of other developing regions, it is increasing rapidly. Singapore is unique in that it is essentially totally urban. In addition, the Philippines has a much higher than average level of urbanization, in part because of its Spanish and American colonial history. The largest cities—Jakarta (Indonesia), Bangkok, and Manila—are among the world’s most populous. The growth of cities of all sizes is being fueled primarily by natural increase, but rural-urban migration also is a significant contributor. Rural dwellers continue to be attracted by the promise of employment and other opportunities, but for many migrants the informal (undocumented) economic sector in these large cities is the only hope for some form of employment. Settlement patterns in rural areas tend to be associated with agricultural practices. Shifting cultivation is still common in some parts of the region (notably the remote interior areas of Myanmar, Vietnam, and the island of Borneo), although the amount of land so utilized is gradually shrinking. The village is the unit of settlement and often functions collectively, and typically it is moved from time to time. By contrast, wet-rice cultivation, the dominant form of agriculture in Southeast Asia, is sedentary and results in relatively large rural agglomerations with well-developed village life and customs. Dry and upland farming often produces scattered homesteads. Population resettlement to provide agricultural employment and access to land is important in some Southeast Asian countries, notably Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. By far the largest program has been conducted in Indonesia, where more than four million people have been voluntarily resettled from Java and Bali to the less populated islands. Despite considerable success, the program has been plagued by such problems as improper site selection, environmental deterioration, migrant adjustment, land conflicts, and inadequate financing. A program in Malaysia also has been quite successful, in part because it has set much smaller resettlement targets and has been better funded. Vietnamese development policy also has utilized the resettlement of people in an effort to revitalize areas outside the major population centres.

On 8 August 1967, five leaders – the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – sat down together in the main hall of the Department of Foreign Affairs building in Bangkok, Thailand and signed a document. By virtue of that document, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was born. The five Foreign Ministers who signed it – Adam Malik of Indonesia, Narciso R. Ramos of the Philippines, Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia, S. Rajaratnam of Singapore, and Thanat Khoman of Thailand – would subsequently be hailed as the Founding Fathers of probably the most successful inter-governmental organization in the developing world today. And the document that they signed would be known as the ASEAN Declaration. It was a short, simply-worded document containing just five articles. It declared the establishment of an Association for Regional Cooperation among the Countries of Southeast Asia to be known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and spelled out the aims and purposes of that Association. These aims and purposes were about cooperation in the economic, social, cultural, technical, educational and other fields, and in the promotion of regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law and adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter. It stipulated that the Association would be open for participation by all States in the Southeast Asian region subscribing to its aims, principles and purposes. It proclaimed ASEAN as representing “the collective will of the nations of Southeast Asia to bind themselves together in friendship and cooperation and, through joint efforts and sacrifices, secure for their peoples and for posterity the blessings of peace, freedom and prosperity.” It was while Thailand was brokering reconciliation among Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia over certain disputes that it dawned on the four countries that the moment for regional cooperation had come or the future of the region would remain uncertain. Recalls one of the two surviving protagonists of that historic process, Thanat Khoman of Thailand: “At the banquet marking the reconciliation between the three disputants, I broached the idea of forming another organization for regional cooperation with Adam Malik. Malik agreed without hesitation but asked for time to talk with his government and also to normalize relations with Malaysia now that the confrontation was over. Meanwhile, the Thai Foreign Office prepared a draft charter of the new institution. Within a few months, everything was ready. I therefore invited the two former members of the Association for Southeast Asia (ASA), Malaysia and the Philippines, and Indonesia, a key member, to a meeting in Bangkok. In addition, Singapore sent S. Rajaratnam, then Foreign Minister, to see me about joining the new set-up. Although the new organization was planned to comprise only the ASA members plus Indonesia, Singapore’s request was favorably considered.” And so in early August 1967, the five Foreign Ministers spent four days in the relative isolation of a beach resort in Bang Saen, a coastal town less than a hundred kilometers southeast of Bangkok. There they negotiated over that document in a decidedly informal manner which they would later delight in describing as “sports-shirt diplomacy.” Yet it was by no means an easy process: each man brought into the deliberations a historical and political perspective that had no resemblance to that of any of the others. But with goodwill and good humor, as often as they huddled at the negotiating table, they finessed their way through their differences as they lined up their shots on the golf course and traded wisecracks on one another’s game, a style of deliberation which would eventually become the ASEAN ministerial tradition. Now, with the rigors of negotiations and the informalities of Bang Saen behind them, with their signatures neatly attached to the ASEAN Declaration, also known as the Bangkok Declaration, it was time for some formalities. The first to speak was the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Narciso Ramos, a one-time journalist and long-time legislator who had given up a chance to be Speaker of the Philippine Congress to serve as one of his country’s first diplomats. He was then 66 years old and his only son, the future President Fidel V. Ramos, was serving with the Philippine Civic Action Group in embattled Vietnam. He recalled the tediousness of the negotiations that preceded the signing of the Declaration that “truly taxed the goodwill, the imagination, the patience and understanding of the five participating Ministers.” That ASEAN was established at all in spite of these difficulties, he said, meant that its foundations had been solidly laid. And he impressed it on the audience of diplomats, officials and media people who had witnessed the signing ceremony that a great sense of urgency had prompted the Ministers to go through all that trouble. He spoke darkly of the forces that were arrayed against the survival of the countries of Southeast Asia in those uncertain and critical times. “The fragmented economies of Southeast Asia,” he said, “(with) each country pursuing its own limited objectives and dissipating its meager resources in the overlapping or even conflicting endeavors of sister states carry the seeds of weakness in their incapacity for growth and their self-perpetuating dependence on the advanced, industrial nations. ASEAN, therefore, could marshal the still untapped potentials of this rich region through more substantial united action

When it was his turn to speak, Adam Malik, Presidium Minister for Political Affairs and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, recalled that about a year before, in Bangkok, at the conclusion of the peace talks between Indonesia and Malaysia, he had explored the idea of an organization such as ASEAN with his Malaysian and Thai counterparts. One of the “angry young men” in his country’s struggle for independence two decades earlier, Adam Malik was then 50 years old and one of a Presidium of five led by then General Soeharto that was steering Indonesia from the verge of economic and political chaos. He was the Presidium’s point man in Indonesia’s efforts to mend fences with its neighbors in the wake of an unfortunate policy of confrontation. During the past year, he said, the Ministers had all worked together toward the realization of the ASEAN idea, “making haste slowly, in order to build a new association for regional cooperation.” Adam Malik went on to describe Indonesia’s vision of a Southeast Asia developing into “a region which can stand on its own feet, strong enough to defend itself against any negative influence from outside the region.” Such a vision, he stressed, was not wishful thinking, if the countries of the region effectively cooperated with each other, considering their combined natural resources and manpower. He referred to differences of outlook among the member countries, but those differences, he said, would be overcome through a maximum of goodwill and understanding, faith and realism. Hard work, patience and perseverance, he added, would also be necessary. The countries of Southeast Asia should also be willing to take responsibility for whatever happens to them, according to Tun Abdul Razak, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, who spoke next. In his speech, he conjured a vision of an ASEAN that would include all the countries of Southeast Asia. Tun Abdul Razak was then concurrently his country’s Minister of Defence and Minister of National Development. It was a time when national survival was the overriding thrust of Malaysia’s relations with other nations and so as Minister of Defence, he was in charge of his country’s foreign affairs. He stressed that the countries of the region should recognize that unless they assumed their common responsibility to shape their own destiny and to prevent external intervention and interference, Southeast Asia would remain fraught with danger and tension. And unless they took decisive and collective action to prevent the eruption of intra-regional conflicts, the nations of Southeast Asia would remain susceptible to manipulation, one against another. “We the nations and peoples of Southeast Asia,” Tun Abdul Razak said, “must get together and form by ourselves a new perspective and a new framework for our region. It is important that individually and jointly we should create a deep awareness that we cannot survive for long as independent but isolated peoples unless we also think and act together and unless we prove by deeds that we belong to a family of Southeast Asian nations bound together by ties of friendship and goodwill and imbued with our own ideals and aspirations and determined to shape our own destiny”. He added that, “with the establishment of ASEAN, we have taken a firm and a bold step on that road”. For his part, S. Rajaratnam, a former Minister of Culture of multi-cultural Singapore who, at that time, served as its first Foreign Minister, noted that two decades of nationalist fervor had not fulfilled the expectations of the people of Southeast Asia for better living standards. If ASEAN would succeed, he said, then its members would have to marry national thinking with regional thinking. “We must now think at two levels,” Rajaratnam said. “We must think not only of our national interests but posit them against regional interests: that is a new way of thinking about our problems. And these are two different things and sometimes they can conflict. Secondly, we must also accept the fact, if we are really serious about it, that regional existence means painful adjustments to those practices and thinking in our respective countries. We must make these painful and difficult adjustments. If we are not going to do that, then regionalism remains a utopia.” S. Rajaratnam expressed the fear, however, that ASEAN would be misunderstood. “We are not against anything”, he said, “not against anybody”. And here he used a term that would have an ominous ring even today: balkanization. In Southeast Asia, as in Europe and any part of the world, he said, outside powers had a vested interest in the balkanization of the region. “We want to ensure,” he said, “a stable Southeast Asia, not a balkanized Southeast Asia. And those countries who are interested, genuinely interested, in the stability of Southeast Asia, the prosperity of Southeast Asia, and better economic and social conditions, will welcome small countries getting together to pool their collective resources and their collective wisdom to contribute to the peace of the world.” The goal of ASEAN, then, is to create, not to destroy. This, the Foreign Minister of Thailand, Thanat Khoman, stressed when it was his turn to speak. At a time when the Vietnam conflict was raging and American forces seemed forever entrenched in Indochina, he had foreseen their eventual withdrawal from the area and had accordingly applied himself to adjusting Thailand’s foreign policy to a reality that would only become apparent more than half a decade later. He must have had that in mind when, on that occasion, he said that the countries of Southeast Asia had no choice but to adjust to the exigencies of the time, to move toward closer cooperation and even integration. Elaborating on ASEAN objectives, he spoke of “building a new society that will be responsive to the needs of our time and efficiently equipped to bring about, for the enjoyment and the material as well as spiritual advancement of our peoples, conditions of stability and progress. Particularly what millions of men and women in our part of the world want is to erase the old and obsolete concept of domination and subjection of the past and replace it with the new spirit of give and take, of equality and partnership. More than anything else, they want to be master of their own house and to enjoy the inherent right to decide their own destiny …” While the nations of Southeast Asia prevent attempts to deprive them of their freedom and sovereignty, he said, they must first free themselves from the material impediments of ignorance, disease and hunger. Each of these nations cannot accomplish that alone, but by joining together and cooperating with those who have the same aspirations, these objectives become easier to attain. Then Thanat Khoman concluded: “What we have decided today is only a small beginning of what we hope will be a long and continuous sequence of accomplishments of which we ourselves, those who will join us later and the generations to come, can be proud. Let it be for Southeast Asia, a potentially rich region, rich in history, in spiritual as well as material resources and indeed for the whole ancient continent of Asia, the light of happiness and well-being that will shine over the uncounted millions of our struggling peoples.” The Foreign Minister of Thailand closed the inaugural session of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by presenting each of his colleagues with a memento. Inscribed on the memento presented to the Foreign Minister of Indonesia, was the citation, “In recognition of services rendered by His Excellency Adam Malik to the ASEAN organization, the name of which was suggested by him.” And that was how ASEAN was conceived, given a name, and born. It had been barely 14 months since Thanat Khoman brought up the ASEAN idea in his conversations with his Malaysian and Indonesian colleagues. In about three more weeks, Indonesia would fully restore diplomatic relations with Malaysia, and soon after that with Singapore. That was by no means the end to intra-ASEAN disputes, for soon the Philippines and Malaysia would have a falling out on the issue of sovereignty over Sabah. Many disputes between ASEAN countries persist to this day. But all Member Countries are deeply committed to resolving their differences through peaceful means and in the spirit of mutual accommodation. Every dispute would have its proper season but it would not be allowed to get in the way of the task at hand. And at that time, the essential task was to lay the framework of regional dialogue and cooperation. The two-page Bangkok Declaration not only contains the rationale for the establishment of ASEAN and its specific objectives. It represents the organization’s modus operandi of building on small steps, voluntary, and informal arrangements towards more binding and institutionalized agreements. All the founding member states and the newer members have stood fast to the spirit of the Bangkok Declaration. Over the years, ASEAN has progressively entered into several formal and legally-binding instruments, such as the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia and the 1995 Treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. Against the backdrop of conflict in the then Indochina, the Founding Fathers had the foresight of building a community of and for all Southeast Asian states. Thus the Bangkok Declaration promulgated that “the Association is open for participation to all States in the Southeast Asian region subscribing to the aforementioned aims, principles and purposes.” ASEAN’s inclusive outlook has paved the way for community-building not only in Southeast Asia, but also in the broader Asia Pacific region where several other inter-governmental organizations now co-exist. The original ASEAN logo presented five brown sheaves of rice stalks, one for each founding member. Beneath the sheaves is the legend “ASEAN” in blue. These are set on a field of yellow encircled by a blue border. Brown stands for strength and stability, yellow for prosperity and blue for the spirit of cordiality in which ASEAN affairs are conducted. When ASEAN celebrated its 30th Anniversary in 1997, the sheaves on the logo had increased to ten – representing all ten countries of Southeast Asia and reflecting the colors of the flags of all of them. In a very real sense, ASEAN and Southeast Asia would then be one and the same, just as the Founding Fathers had envisioned. This article is based on the first chapter of ASEAN at 30, a publication of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in commemoration of its 30th Anniversary on 8 August 1997, written by Jamil Maidan Flores and Jun Abad.

Early society and accomplishments Origins Knowledge of the early prehistory of Southeast Asia has undergone exceptionally rapid change as a result of archaeological discoveries made since the 1960s, although the interpretation of these findings has remained the subject of extensive debate. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the region has been inhabited from the earliest times. Hominid fossil remains date from approximately 1,500,000 years ago and those of Homo sapiens from approximately 40,000 years ago. Furthermore, until about 7000 bce the seas were some 150 feet (50 metres) lower than they are now, and the area west of Makassar Strait consisted of a web of watered plains that sometimes is called Sundaland. These land connections perhaps account for the coherence of early human development observed in the Hoabinhian culture, which lasted from about 13,000 to 5000 or 4000 bce. The stone tools used by hunting and gathering societies across Southeast Asia during this period show a remarkable degree of similarity in design and development. When the sea level rose to approximately its present level about 6000 bce, conditions were created for a more variegated environment and, therefore, for more extensive differentiation in human development. While migration from outside the region may have taken place, it did not do so in a massive or clearly punctuated fashion; local evolutionary processes and the circulation of peoples were far more powerful forces in shaping the region’s cultural landscape. Technological developments and population expansion Perhaps because of a particular combination of geophysical and climatic factors, early Southeast Asia did not develop uniformly in the direction of increasingly complex societies. Not only have significant hunting and gathering populations continued to exist into the 21st century, but the familiar cultural sequences triggered by such events as the discovery of agriculture or metallurgy do not seem to apply. This is not to say that the technological capabilities of early Southeast Asian peoples were negligible, for sophisticated metalworking (bronze) and agriculture (rice) were being practiced by the end of the 3rd millennium bce in northeastern Thailand and northern Vietnam, and sailing vessels of advanced design and sophisticated navigational skills were spread over a wider area by the same time or earlier. Significantly, these technologies do not appear to have been borrowed from elsewhere but were indigenous and distinctive in character. Austronesian languages Austronesian languagesMajor divisions of the Austronesian languages. These technological changes may partially account for two crucial developments in Southeast Asia’s later prehistory. The first is the extraordinary seaborne expansion of speakers of Proto-Austronesian languages and their descendants, speakers of Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) languages, which occurred over a period of 5,000 years or more and came to encompass a vast area and to stretch nearly half the circumference of Earth at the Equator. This outward movement of people and culture was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the result of societal preference for small groups and a tendency of groups to hive off once a certain population size had been reached. It began as early as 4000 bce, when Taiwan was populated from the Asian mainland, and subsequently it continued southward through the northern Philippines (3rd millennium bce), central Indonesia (2nd millennium bce), and western and eastern Indonesia (2nd and 1st millennia bce). From approximately 1000 bce on the expansion continued both eastward into the Pacific, where that immense region was populated in a process continuing to about 1000 ce as voyagers reached the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand, and westward, where Malay peoples reached and settled the island of Madagascar sometime between 500 and 700 ce, bringing with them (among other things) bananas, which are native to Southeast Asia. Thus, for a considerable period of time, the Southeast Asian region contributed to world cultural history, rather than merely accepting outside influences, as frequently has been suggested. The second development, which began possibly as early as 1000 bce, centred on the production of fine bronze and the fashioning of bronze-and-iron objects, particularly as they have been found at the site in northern Vietnam known as Dong Son. The earliest objects consisted of socketed plowshares and axes, shaft-hole sickles, spearheads, and such small items as fishhooks and personal ornaments. By about 500 bce the Dong Son culture had begun producing the bronze drums for which it is known. The drums are large objects (some weigh more than 150 pounds [70 kg]), and they were produced by the difficult lost-wax casting process and decorated with fine geometric shapes and depictions of animals and humans. This metal industry was not derived from similar industries in China or India. Rather, the Dong Son period offers one of the most powerful—though not necessarily the only or earliest—examples of Southeast Asian societies transforming themselves into more densely populated, hierarchical, and centralized communities. Since typical drums, either originals or local renditions, have been found throughout Southeast Asia and since they are associated with a rich trade in exotics and other goods, the Dong Son culture also suggests that the region as a whole consisted not of isolated, primitive niches of human settlement but of a variety of societies and cultures tied together by broad and long-extant trading patterns. Although none of these societies possessed writing, some displayed considerable sophistication and technological skill, and, although none appears to have constituted a territorial centralized state, new and more complex polities were forming.

Southeast Asia, vast region of Asia situated east of the Indian subcontinent and south of China. It consists of two dissimilar portions: a continental projection (commonly called mainland Southeast Asia) and a string of archipelagoes to the south and east of the mainland (insular Southeast Asia). Extending some 700 miles (1,100 km) southward from the mainland into insular Southeast Asia is the Malay Peninsula; this peninsula structurally is part of the mainland, but it also shares many ecological and cultural affinities with the surrounding islands and thus functions as a bridge between the two regions. Mainland Southeast Asia is divided into the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Vietnam, and the small city-state of Singapore at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula; Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, which occupy the eastern portion of the mainland, often are collectively called the Indochinese Peninsula. Malaysia is both mainland and insular, with a western portion on the Malay Peninsula and an eastern part on the island of Borneo. Except for the small sultanate of Brunei (also on Borneo), the remainder of insular Southeast Asia consists of the archipelagic nations of Indonesia and the Philippines. Southeast Asia stretches some 4,000 miles at its greatest extent (roughly from northwest to southeast) and encompasses some 5,000,000 square miles (13,000,000 square km) of land and sea, of which about 1,736,000 square miles is land. Mount Hkakabo in northern Myanmar on the border with China, at 19,295 feet (5,881 meters), is the highest peak of mainland Southeast Asia. Although the modern nations of the region are sometimes thought of as being small, they are—with the exceptions of Singapore and Brunei—comparatively large. Indonesia, for example, is more than 3,000 miles from west to east (exceeding the west-east extent of the continental United States) and more than 1,000 miles from north to south; the area of Laos is only slightly smaller than that of the United Kingdom; and Myanmar is considerably larger than France. All of Southeast Asia falls within the tropical and subtropical climatic zones, and much of it receives considerable annual precipitation. It is subject to an extensive and regular monsoonal weather system (i.e., one in which the prevailing winds reverse direction every six months) that produces marked wet and dry periods in most of the region. Southeast Asia’s landscape is characterized by three intermingled physical elements: mountain ranges, plains and plateaus, and water in the form of both shallow seas and extensive drainage systems. Of these, the rivers probably have been of the greatest historical and cultural significance, for waterways have decisively shaped forms of settlement and agriculture, determined fundamental political and economic patterns, and helped define the nature of Southeast Asians’ worldview and distinctive cultural syncretism. It also has been of great importance that Southeast Asia, which is the most easily accessible tropical region in the world, lies strategically astride the sea passage between East Asia and the Middle Eastern–Mediterranean world. Within this broad outline, Southeast Asia is perhaps the most diverse region on Earth. The number of large and small ecological niches is more than matched by a staggering variety of economic, social, and cultural niches Southeast Asians have developed for themselves; hundreds of ethnic groups and languages have been identified. Under these circumstances, it often is difficult to keep in mind the region’s underlying unity, and it is understandable that Southeast Asia should so often be treated as a miscellaneous collection of cultures that simply do not quite fit anywhere else. Roofs of the Forbidden City, Beijing, China Britannica Quiz All About Asia Yet from ancient times Southeast Asia has been considered by its neighbors to be a region in its own right and not merely an extension of their own lands. The Chinese called it Nanyang and the Japanese Nan’yō, both names meaning “South Seas,” and South Asians used such terms as Suvarnabhūmi (Sanskrit: “Land of Gold”) to describe the area. Modern scholarship increasingly has yielded evidence of broad commonalities uniting the peoples of the region across time. Studies in historical linguistics, for example, have suggested that the vast majority of Southeast Asian languages—even many of those previously considered to have separate origins—either sprang from common roots or have been long and inseparably intertwined. Despite inevitable variation among societies, common views of gender, family structure, and social hierarchy and mobility may be discerned throughout mainland and insular Southeast Asia, and a broadly common commercial and cultural inheritance has continued to affect the entire region for several millennia. These and other commonalities have yet to produce a conscious or precise Southeast Asian identity, but they have given substance to the idea of Southeast Asia as a definable world region and have provided a framework for the comparative study of its components.

Demographic trends The annual rate of natural increase in Southeast Asia averages slightly higher than the annual world rate. Considerable variation exists, however, among the region’s countries. The Philippines, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brunei are characterized by higher growth; Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia, on the other hand, have considerably lower rates, primarily because of the implementation of effective family-planning programs in these countries. In general, the pace of fertility decline is accelerating, although it is being offset by declining infant mortality and increasing life expectancy. Infant mortality for the region approximates the world average. In the more developed nations—especially Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand—health care programs for infants and children have helped bring about mortality rates well below world averages, while the scarcity of these programs in such countries as Cambodia and Laos has contributed to continued high rates. Life expectancy in the region is somewhat below the world average, with Cambodia having the lowest average and Singapore the highest. Population change also is directly related to internal and external migration. As noted above, rural-to-urban migration continues to be a major aspect of change in nearly all Southeast Asian nations. In certain countries, considerable evidence exists for movements between rural areas (e.g., Thailand) and mobility between urban areas (Indonesia). Internal migration in the Philippines is dominated by movements to Manila and to the frontier areas in the south. Perhaps most significant, given the increasing mobility of the population and access to transport services, is the growth of nonpermanent population movements. Seasonal and other forms of circular migration for limited periods of time are conspicuous, especially in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. The growth in transport access also has created greater commuting ranges for individuals who in the past often had to leave their homes and fields for extended periods to take up work. Refugee movements have been conspicuous in the region, particularly since the mid-1970s. The Vietnamese out-migration to Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, as well as to Hong Kong, is noteworthy. Cambodian and Laotian peoples also have experienced displacement. In addition, there have been numerous instances of religious minorities fleeing persecution, such as the departure of Muslim Burmans in the early 1990s.

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