The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formed in 1967 which included Southeast Asian countries. It was founded to promote political and economic cooperation and regional stability in the ASEAN region. The ASEAN Declaration in 1967, which is considered to be the ASEAN’s founding document, formalized the principles of peace and cooperation to which ASEAN is dedicated to. The ASEAN Community is focussed on the areas of Political-Security Community, Economic Community, and Socio-Cultural Community. This paper will solely concentrate on the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) were established on December 31, 2015. The purpose of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is to facilitate the development and the liberalization era of ASEAN region. However, there are problems and challenges along the implementation of ASEAN for example, the lack of strategic vision, diverging national priorities, and weak leadership. ASEAN’s biggest challenge is negotiating a unified approach to China, particularly in response to China’s claims in the South China Sea. This study argues whether or not Malaysia economic performances will thrives under AEC based on the AEC blueprint and AEC plans toward the future. This qualitative study is guided by three objectives that are very important to achieve in this study; firstly to analyse ASEAN Economic Community, its contents and relate to Malaysia. Secondly, the study analyse the Malaysian economic performance in the early stages of the ASEAN Economic Community’ establishment. Thirdly, the study identify Malaysia economic future under ASEAN Economic Community. The findings of this study shows that Malaysia can benefit from the formation of ASEAN Economic Community if the problems and challenges could be solved. In the meanwhile, Malaysia commitment in realizing the missions and goals of ASEAN and AEC is a great sign of how successful this agreement can be in the future. Finally, the study suggests that future studies to be conducted in ten ASEAN countries by using different types of questions, sampling procedures, and methods of analysis. Future studies can also be conducted by involving other variables of the public opinion on regionalization, regionalism or regional security
