Strategic environment of post-2015 Asean

Construction workers on the structure of a building in Beijing on Thursday. Foreign investment into China accelerated in November, government data showed, despite a worsening slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy and concerns over business risks. – AFP

EVEN as Asean focuses on the nitty-gritty of integration and community-building, it should not lose sight of the strategic environment evolving around it.

While a number of measures and initiatives may seem – however large – to have singular implication, they will add up to geo-economic and geo-political change in the regional, even global, system.