Fueled by wide-spread, rapid economic growth over several decades through much of the region (even taking into account setbacks such as the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis), ASEAN now aspires to be something far more than an elite diplomatic talking shop. On the world stage, the Association has positioned itself as a focal forum for Asia-wide international diplomacy (in the form of ASEAN+3 and ASEAN+6 meetings). Locally, that is to say, within the region itself, ASEAN now strives to be an organization – or even more optimistically, an affective entity – upon which a sense of “one sharing, caring community,” of Southeast Asians can be envisioned and enacted.
In mid-2007, we were tasked and supported by the ASEAN Foundation to undertake a base-line survey on university students throughout the region, with the objective of gauging their awareness of and attitudes toward ASEAN as a whole and its member nations. The survey was designed to measure several dimensions of students’ knowledge about and orientations toward ASEAN. By targeting university students, we are not attempting to determine the common opinions of the general population of each nation (though our results almost certainly reflect those to some degree). Rather, we are taking a measure of the ideas and feelings of the most highly educate members of the next generation of ASEAN citizens. These youths’ average age was twenty at the time of the survey, and thus approximately ten years old at the time ASEAN expanded to its current ten-member status. They have come of age along with the organization itself. As the most successful products of the modern educational systems and media environments of each nation, their ideas reflect those sources on which they draw to think about the region they live in. The results from the survey indicate the sorts of orientations and aspirations they have in relationship to ASEAN.
In the report that follows, we first describe the methods used to collect data and the characteristics of the samples of students from each nation where the survey was conducted. We then turn to the substantive findings of the report organized into five themes: ATTITUDES toward ASEAN as a whole, KNOWLEDGE about the region and the Association, ORIENTATION toward the region and countries, SOURCES of information about the region, and ASPIRATIONS for integration and action. We conclude the report by summarizing key findings on a nation-by-nation basis followed by a general summary of region wide trends and what they suggest for the prospects of intra-regional relations in the coming generation and the future development of ASEAN as a regional grouping.