Euphoria greeted the decision: it has been 31 years since a charter was first suggested. This, however, seemed to overlook the tough negotiations still to be faced in turning an outline into a draft for the next summit in November.

Whether a region synonymous with corruption, muddled laws and rigid sovereignty can produce an effective charter and prepare mechanisms to resolve trade disputes across borders is questionable. It is certainly ambitious.

Tricky technical issues will pale beside political ones, such as majority voting on binding policy decisions. Large states in the European Union, for example, hold two votes; smaller members one. Giving Brunei, with 250,000 people, and Indonesia with a population of 230 million, one vote each is neither credible nor fair.

In any case, majority voting might be more than Myanmar's generals can stomach. Myanmar could face censure, even expulsion, over the junta's broken promises to restore democracy and respect human rights, as well as fears about the consequences of Myanmar's actions for Asean relations with the US and the European Union. Writing an effective charter, rather than the usual Asean fudge, is going to be a severe test. But it is one that Asean can avoid no longer in the face of China scaling ever greater heights of power.

Asean has already felt the effects. A US-sponsored UN Security Council resolution calling on Myanmar to mend its ways was killed off this month after a Chinese veto, a power which Beijing rarely uses. However, the greatest impact comes from China's economic slipstream.

Beijing's decision in 1994 to peg the yuan at 8.28 against the US dollar, up from 5, was a major - if often ignored - factor in the domino collapse of Asean currencies in 1997. Local and foreign investors had, in those intervening years, been dropping Asean's currencies in favour of the yuan. Nevertheless, Southeast Asian leaders cheered and clapped when Beijing held the yuan steady during the late 1990s depression and dished out soft loans, saving Asean from deeper economic collapse. As with Japan and South Korea, China is now a top trade partner of some Asean states, and more are likely to see their economies sucked into its wake. Indeed, with no sign of the Asean-China trade boom ending (it was up 23 per cent, to US$161 billion, last year), China will replace America as the grouping's largest trade partner by as early as next year. Asean's trade surplus with China may even rise, as the strengthening yuan makes Asean goods and holidays, factories and firms cheaper for Chinese consumers and investors. Moreover, China's courting has done wonders for relations with every Asean state, even those traditionally wary nations like Indonesia and Vietnam. Its influence in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos is unmatched thanks to aid, trade, investment and migration. A new deal reducing barriers to services trade will further intertwine Asean and China ahead of their free-trade zone scheduled to open in 2010. Efforts to cut the paperwork hampering trade are being matched on the ground by work to speed the passage of goods and people. In a few years, Asean and China will be stitched together like never before.

Whether Asean governments like it or not, patterns of trade and transport are beginning to dictate new realities and interests that will make their mark on domestic and regional politics for years.

Trade and investment bring security interests. Such ties with Southeast Asia are pricked by the perennial thorn of competing claims to the Spratly Islands, contested by China and four Asean members. It may, however, turn into a rose because China can gain far more through compromise than force, not least burnishing its reputation worldwide. Asean and China's commitments to a peaceful resolution, made in 2002, were reaffirmed in Cebu.

Sidestepping this problem, Beijing wants to host joint peacekeeping training in July as a way to build confidence, paving the way for closer security ties. A formal pact is, for now, a distant prospect. But the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation - established to steady Central Asia and, of late, providing a plank for trade - may be a model of what Beijing wants in order to secure stability and check rivals, especially the US, along its borders.

With trade, investment and security interests deepening rapidly, Asean's proposed economic community may be too late to moderate China's pull. Southeast Asia's fortunes increasingly lie with the future prosperity of China and the political mood in Beijing.

David Fullbrook is a freelance writer and political analyst