Largely divided between British, French, Dutch and Spanish colonialists, south-east Asia was rarely thought of as a region until the second world war, when a command was created under that name by UK prime minister Winston Churchill and US president Franklin Roosevelt for Lord Mountbatten, the allied commander.

The concept reappeared in 1967, when the Association of South East Asian Nations was created by Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines in an attempt to end cross-border disputes and facilitate a degree of collective security against China, then starting to look outwards again after two decades of recovery from civil war.

Almost half a century on, with Vietnam, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia and Burma now also in the club, the issues remain the same. The stakes, however, are higher as the region seeks to reconcile fear of Chinese domination with the economic opportunities offered by its giant neighbour’s booming economy.