ASEAN Overview

ASEAN is a regional grouping of 10 countries in South East Asia, which was established on August 8, 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand, with five member states comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, primarily for promoting political co-operation. ASEAN leaders agreed to create ASEAN as a regional economic cooperation area with a stable, high competitiveness, equitable development and poverty reduction and inequality within society. Subsequently, five ASEAN member countries have decided to participate: Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR. The decision to join the ASEAN Community of Laos on July 23, 1997 with four strategic considerations:

1. To ensure stability is the constant and growing of the new regime, avoiding loneliness;
2. To transform ASEAN's socialist liberalism into peaceful coexistence;
3. To use ASEAN to help create socio-economic development of Lao PDR;
4. To use the open space of ASEAN to go outside.

To join the ASEAN Community of Lao PDR is a new level of cooperation between the Lao PDR and other ASEAN member countries, as well as the lifting of Liaoning into regional integration with the Association of Asian Nations.

The main goal of ASEAN economic cooperation is to make each member country and region strong, self-reliant and self-reliant. In order to achieve this goal, Lao PDR has been actively working with other ASEAN members by joining parties in economic agreements, conventions and conventions. ASEAN is currently focusing on efforts to build the ASEAN Community, which consists of three pillars: the ASEAN Political-Security Community, the ASEAN Economic Community, and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (AEC) 2015, which ASEAN has agreed on December 31, 2015 as the date of establishment of the ASEAN Community (AEC 2015). Then, ASEAN will become one of the strongest organizations in the region, with its own Charter of ASEAN (ASEAN Charter) to jointly safeguard and promote the regional peace, stability and permanence.

Currently, ASEAN is negotiating a free trade area (FTA) with seven dialogue partners and four ASEAN partner countries, namely China, Japan, Korea, Australia-New Zealand, India, Hong Kong (China), the United States of America, Russia, Canada and the European Union. The ASEAN + 3 will include: China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, and ASEAN + 1 to Hong Kong, which has completed negotiations in 2017.

In order to achieve this goal, ASEAN has focused on moving goods, moving services, moving investment, moving migrant workers, and moving more freely on the basis of relevant contracts such as moving goods according to the ASEAN Trade In Goods Agreement (ATIGA), trade in services is based on the