The countries and areas encompassing the Greater Mekong Sub-region together combine a great variety of landscapes, resource bases, ethnic groups and economic and political systems. For example, Thailand has followed free market principles in its pattern of development. Cambodia, Lao, Vietnam and Yunnan are engaged in a transition from mainly planned economies towards more open, free-market systems. Myanmar remains largely isolated from the international community and pursues its special variant of socialist, mainly planned, economics. With the exception of Yunnan, all are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and all are experiencing, although to various degrees, flows of regional and global investment, trade and labor that warrant the designation of these countries as a separate sub-region in the Asian and global economy (World vision, 2005).