Southeast Asia has come a long way. ASEAN has evolved from an agrarian backwater that has been stricken by war and ravaged by colonialism to become a global economic powerhouse.

Is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) resilient enough to thrive amid the regional and global transformations taking place today? While the global economy continues its broad-based expansion, disruptive economic, geostrategic, and technological forces may threaten ASEAN’s gains of recent years. To survive, ASEAN members must make important decisions about the role of their community in regional affairs.

From 2007 to 2014, trade by ASEAN nations grew by a value of nearly US$1 trillion to a total of US$2.5 trillion. A quarter (24 percent) of ASEAN’s total trade was within the region, followed by trade with China (14 percent), Europe (10 percent), Japan (nine percent) and the United States (US) (eight percent).

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has seen many sweeping changes in the way we interact with one another. This interaction is not limited to human-to-human relationships but is extended to the way we deal with finances; with the idea of digitalising purchases and transactions now a reality. Mobile wallets are part of this reality, with users able to carry out purchases through cashless means, and as the term suggests, with the use of a smartphone.

Cybercrime is on the rise throughout Southeast Asia, with the region’s rapid development in terms of digital technologies making it a prime target for cybercriminals.

With the Fourth Industrial Revolution now a common reality, there is no denying that technology has wrapped its invisible fingers around the lives of people across the globe. By 2020, this revolution will have brought us advanced robotics and self-driving transport, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, besides modern materials, biotechnology, and genomics. Against this backdrop, employability in a modern world becomes more difficult as new skills need to be adopted.

The retail sector accounts for the largest source of employment in the Southeast Asian region. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), it employs an aggregate of 44.6 million workers, which represents 16 percent of the region’s total employment.

Much ado about the 31st ASEAN SummitThe highlight for this week was the conclusion of the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Meetings which began last week.

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explained that the Fourth industrial revolution builds on the Third industrial revolution which was largely based on the use of electronics and information technology to automate production.Schwab writes that the Fourth industrial revolution “is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.”According to the World Economic Forum and Asian Devel

Da Nang, Vietnam will play host to the 2017 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Week from November 6-10.APEC is the leading economic forum in the Asia Pacific region with a focus on supporting sustainable economic growth and prosperity of economies within the region. To date, it is the only such intergovernmental grouping in the world with a commitment to reduce trade and investment barriers without requiring its members to enter legally binding obligations.