BEIJING: In a global context of geopolitical wrangling and lingering pandemic impacts such as supply chain disruptions, state leaders, government officials and heads of international organizations, as well as scholars and entrepreneurs from the world over, gathered on China’s tropical island province of Hainan for the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) annual conference—a meeting of minds that took place entirely offline once again from March 28 to 31. The previous two editions of the event occurred both online and offline due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the 2020 annual conference was canceled altogether.
The BFA takes its name from the town of Boao, once just a small fishing village in Hainan, which has been the permanent venue for the annual conference since 2001. Committed to promoting regional economic integration, this year’s edition, themed An Uncertain World: Solidarity and Cooperation for Development Amid Challenges, again set out to offer the world an Asian vision for shared prosperity.
On March 30, Chinese Premier Li Qiang attended the annual conference’s opening ceremony and delivered his first major public speech after assuming office in mid-March.
“Today, both Asia and the world stand at the crossroads of historical evolution,” Li said, urging for more efforts to jointly safeguard a peaceful and stable environment for development and inject more certainty into a volatile global environment. He further mentioned that China’s economy had performed better in March, reflecting how it “possesses strong resilience, potential and vitality.”
Supply chain disruptions, post-pandemic economic recovery, clean energy and geopolitical tensions topped the agenda of this year’s BFA annual conference.
“The past few years have seen things getting worse. This is not only unfair and unjust, but economically unreliable and unsustainable,” Ban Ki-moon, Chairman of the BFA, said at the opening ceremony. Echoing this year’s BFA theme, the former UN secretary general expressed his hopes the gathering would find certainty in uncertain times.
“After so many crises, shocks and surprises, it’s time to go ahead and plan for a shared future. It is time for renewed action on long-term challenges,” Ban said. BFA Secretary General Li Baodong stressed that a range of major challenges presently highlights the world’s uncertain status quo—from the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts and the world’s economic downturn to global warming.
–The Daily Mail-Beijing Review news exchange item
