This week's focus was South Asia.

South Asia is a sub region of the continent located at the south of China, east of India, and the north of Australia. This sub region is very important because it includes Four of the Five "Tigers" or also known as NICs (Newly Industrialiizyng Countries).

The region is divided in two: The Mainland South East Asia and the Maritime South East Asia.

Maritime Countries: Brunei- East Timor- Indonesia - Malaysia- Philippines - Singapore- Hong Kong- Taiwan

Mainland Countries:- Cambodia- Laos - Myanmar- Thailand- Vietnam

Like East Asia, this Region is influenced by millenary philosophic trends:

• Confucianism
• Buddhism
• Taoism
• China or a strong Chinese expatriate community
• Status
• Karma
  

Some of the materials for this topic was, the presentation made by Maria Alejandra G. Which had a especial insight on Vietnam; an almost unknown country for me, if it weren't for its war.

The presentation exposes the economic and social system of this country and its history, such as the Vietnam War.

Vietnam is not an exception to its region growing trend and has a "promising" future as well.

(Greenhalgh 2009)"In five to 10 years' time, the traditional emerging markets will be too developed and the focus will shift over to the next block of countries, such as Nigeria, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam." Andrea Nannini, manager of the HSBC New Frontiers fund says.

Before the miracles of East Asian (with the exception of Japan), South Asia was already surprising the world with its development and its strong economies, like Singapore and Thailand. When thinking about this an immediately react and wonder, if the crisis is for everyone, what will happen with this tigers or potential tigers?

(Wesley 2009) How can Asian countries individually and collectively deal with this looming crisis? Unfortunately, the obvious solutions are not practical. Redrawing boundaries or relocating minorities offer the prospect of beginning an endless process of claim and counter-claim that could see a stable region unravel into chaos. Hard experience shows that re-engineering populations and boundaries often causes more conflict than it resolves. Neither do the several current proposals to forge an EU-style regional organization offer much prospect of success. Achieving Europe's current level of integration and sovereignty transfer is unlikely to happen in Asia for several decades. And it is not even certain that regional institutions defuse internal conflicts; while "Europe" may have contributed to peace in Northern Ireland, it has made little impact on Basque disgruntlement.

The solution must be a re-forging of the national compact across the states of East, Southeast and South Asia, based on the rejection of ethnic, religious or linguistic identity as a motivating force in politics. There must be a renaissance of the secular compact in Asia's states. The new secularism must be driven by three principles.

First, it must be scrupulously protected from compromise by identity politics. The original reasons for mobilizing the symbols of national majorities- however surreptitiously-are less compelling now than they were half a century ago. Then, the need to forge distinctive national identities had arisen from uncertainties about the viability and legitimacy of the political units that remained after the colonial retreat. But now, after six decades of stability and success, these insecurities are less justified. And the humiliation of colonization will decrease with each passing generation, taking with it the need to assert cultural or spiritual superiority. Second, Asia's new secularism must be popularized and promulgated throughout Asia's societies, rather than becoming again the ideology of elite dominance. Asia's secularism will not be like Europe's, where the official separation of the state and religion has been accompanied by a century-long decline in the public's interest in religion. Instead, Asia's secularism will need to be grafted onto societies in which religion plays a central role in everyday life. But even a deeply religious society can come to accept at all levels that the state must at no stage become the vehicle for advancing religious agendas, and must never be able to use ethnic, religious or linguistic symbolism in promoting its own agendas. To be effective, this agenda needs to be championed by that genuinely, deeply secular force, the media, and promoted through the public education system. Third, the integrity of Asia's new secularism needs to be constantly guarded from the forces of opportunistic populism. The most potent drivers of contemporary identity politics in Asia are driven by contemporary economic and technological events and a surge in political populism.

Bibliography:

Agarwal, Sanjeev, Thomas E DeCarlo, Shyam B. Vyas, & Source:. 1999. Leadership Behavior and Organizational Commitment: A Comparative Study of American and Indian Salespersons. Journal of International Business Studies, 30(4): 727-43.

Hugo Greenhalgh. (2009, May 18). Emerging markets of the future. Financial Times,12. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1716686931).

Michael Wesley. (2009, April). Asia Enters An Era of Strife. Far Eastern Economic Review, 172(3), 14-18. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1682395351).

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