ASEAN

The peace and looking for ways to keep it have been one of the most essential obsessions of the human beings throughout the history. Creation of regional or international organizations is considered as a way to peace building and keeping. In fact, one of the causes of transformation of international organization after the Cold War has been settlement of peace and security. The role of international organizations in order to settle conflicts is more vital and important, because most of these organizations have the ability and legitimacy to play an important role in this regard. In this regard, this article using descriptive- analytic method is intended to investigate the question: “why after the Cold War we have witnessed lower conflicts and tensions in the South East Asia than Middle East, Central Asia, Caucasus and Africa?” Research findings show that ASEAN has had an effective role in peace building and peace keeping through creating norms and regimes of peaceful settlement of disputes and strengthening interdependency, and even it has been successful to make a security community. .

China has become a competitive player in the global higher education landscape with a growing number of Chinese universities being part of the global rankings. With the significant improvement in the quality of some Chinese universities, education as a soft power was deployed by China toward ASEAN countries. This strategy was particularly evident in PRC Ministry of Education’s appeal to Chinese universities to serve the nation’s diplomatic strategies. This paper puts into perspective Sino-ASEAN people-to-people exchange and institutional linkages in the aspect of education. Overall, the article examines the intersections of soft power, geopolitics, and student mobility as situated in the Sino-ASEAN context. Through secondary data analysis, the trend of student mobility from ASEAN countries to China was traced. The results reveal that the ASEAN student outflows to China have been gradually increasing.  By strategically accepting more ASEAN students to Chinese universities, China assists in the development of ASEAN’s human resources and continues to be perceived as a partner in the region’s development.