Much of this cross-border economic activity is done in a low-profile way to minimize attention from Washington.
So much for ASEAN brotherhood.None of which need stop South-East Asian countries from trying to promote cross-border economic co-operation.
Since the early 1990s the central government in Beijing has been trying to reposition Yunnan, from peripheral province to the centre of various cross-border economic networks.
She notes that many of them are products of affluence and have therefore benefited from the very trends of cross-border economic activity, deregulated markets and rapid spread of technology that they are protesting.
It has also indefinitely postponed talks on cross-border economic co-operation.But if nothing else, Mrs Albright's visit allowed Mr Kim to meet his first American, and a posse of mostly American journalists to get their first sight of North Korea.
The traffic was running normally on Wednesday and Thursday morning, with long lines of trucks crawling through the border crossing, South Korean officials said, indicating that the North Korean military did not go so far as to stop cross-border economic exchanges.
This time, however, it did agree to establish a regional free-trade area from 2006, and Mr Vajpayee is even speaking dreamily about open regional borders, economic union and a single currency, on the model of the European Union.
The danger of other risks – the price for Greek society, possible repercussions beyond Greece's borders, economic and political contagion, and the consequence of debunking the basic principle that the euro is irreversible – is far more difficult to predict.
The surge in drug use has been fueled by porous borders, economic hardship and, more recently, the rolling back of restrictions on coca growing since President Evo Morales took office in 2006 in neighboring Bolivia.
