Its members are the 10 Asean countries with a total population of 600 million people. Asean was set up in 1967 as a bulwark against communism in the Cold War era but it was only in the last two decades that attention shifted to economic integration. A wide economic gulf divides Southeast Asia’s rich and middle income economies—Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and the Philippines—and its four less developed members, communist Vietnam and Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.