South East Asia 2005 CE

What is happening in South East Asia in 2005CE

Vietnam

A long war between the communist North Vietnam and anti-communist South Vietnam broke out in the early 1960s, and soon drew in the USA and some other countries, as well as Vietnam’s neighbors Cambodia and Laos. The USA eventually withdrew its forces (1973) and two years later North Vietnamese forces reunited the country. By this time one of the most brutal regimes in world history, the Khmer Rouge, had come to power in Cambodia, inflicting large-scale massacres on the population.

Asian Tigers

Since the 1980s, several South East Asian countries, especially Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, have experienced dramatic economic growth, which gave the them nickname “Asian Tigers”. This has been accompanied by the wide-scale adoption of multi-party democracy in the region (though not everywhere, for example in communist Vietnam). The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997  threatened to bring economic progress to a halt, but within a very short time growth had returned.

Myanmar (Burma)

The outstanding exception to all these developments is Burma, now called Myanmar, which remains under the tight control of an authoritarian military regime.

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