Glossary

Definitions of terms used throughout CountryReports.

This glossary contains 1,144 terms used throughout CountryReports — political, economic, cultural, historical, and geographic terminology referenced in country profiles and articles. Terms are drawn from authoritative sources including the Library of Congress.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Founded in 1967 for the purpose of promoting regional stability, economic development, and cultural exchange. ASEAN’s membership includes Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. India is a ""dialogue partner"" along with Austria, Canada, China, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Russia, and the United States.
boat people: Refugees who fled Vietnam by sea after 1975. Many fell victim to pirate attacks in the Gulf of Thailand, drowned, or endured starvation and dehydration as a result of their escape in ill- equipped and undersized vessels. Those who reached safety in neighboring Southeast Asian countries were accorded temporary asylum in refugee camps while awaiting permanent resettlement in industrialized Western nations willing to accept them.
Colombo Plan: Founded in 1951 and known as the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia until it was expanded in 1977 and called the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in Asia and the Pacific. It is an arrangement that permits a developing member country to approach a developed member country for assistance on a one-to- one basis. Assistance may be technical or in the form of capital or commodity aid.
Confrontation (Konfrontasi): Indonesia’s 1963-66 effort to disrupt the new state of Malaysia, which Indonesian leaders regarded as a front for a continued British colonial presence in Southeast Asia.
Nanyang: Chinese term meaning southern ocean and used to refer to Southeast Asia.
overseas Chinese: Term usually used to refer to any person of Chinese origin living abroad on a permanent basis, without regard to his or her current citizenship. Overseas Chinese minorities are concentrated principally in Southeast Asia but are also found in other parts of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Overseas Chinese have long been important to the government in power in China as a source of business contacts and of financial and moral support from abroad. The majority of foreign investment in China is by overseas Chinese, and more than 90 percent of all foreign tourists who visit China are overseas Chinese. Also used in China to refer to persons living in China who have returned from sojourns abroad.
paddy: Threshed, unmilled rice, which is the basis of the subsistence economy of much of South and Southeast Asia. It is grown on flooded or heavily irrigated flatland.
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO): Established in September 1954 as a result of the 1954 Geneva Agreements to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. SEATO never had an active military role and was ultimately disbanded in June 1977 following the success of the communist movements in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in 1975. Original signatories to SEATO were Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States.
Straits Chinese: Chinese born in the Straits Settlements (q.v.) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and more oriented to Southeast Asia than to China. They often spoke Malay or English as their first language.