Study On Southeast Asia Economic Integration

Since the 1990s, economic globalization and regional economic integration have became two important characters of world economic development, and they produce more and more important influence to the world economy. Along with the rapid development of EU and NAFTA, the region of Southeast Asia gradually started economic cooperation in all fields and all levels, and has made some achievements. In 1992, ASEAN signed an agreement of establishing Free Trade Area (FTA), and after 10 years' efforts, the target was basically achieved in 2002, AFTA was officially lauched. In 2003, ASEAN signed an agreement of creating ASEAN Economic Community in year 2020, and advanced the time to 2015 in 2007.Undeniably, through more than 40 years' developing, regional economic cooperation in ASEAN have great achievements in the field of trade,investment and finance. However, whether the progress of Southeast Asia economic integration seems so rapid superficially? What level it has been reached? There have been done much more qualitative analysis rather than quantitative analysis about Southeast Asia economic integration. Therefore, this paper build a indicator system to measure its regional economic integration from three aspects: trade, finance and produce factor respectively. And then summarize the challenges Southeast Asia economic integration faced and offer some constructive proposals.The structure of the paper is as follows. Chapter 1 is the introduction, includes the background of Southeast Asia economic integration, literature review and so on. Chapter 2 introduces the meaning of regional economic integration and the theories related. Chapter 3 expatiates the progress of Southeast Asia economic integration. Chapter 4 uses the indicators related to trade, finance and production factors to measure the degree of Southeast Asia economic integration. Finally, summarize the challenges faced and offer some related proposals.