Senior leaders,experts call for accelerating Asian integration

Zhou Wenzhong (C), secretary general of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), addresses a press conference of the BFA Annual Conference 2018 in Boao, south China's Hainan Province, April 8, 2018.[Photo:Xinhua]

Senior leaders and experts are calling for accelerating Asian integration and globalization during the ongoing Boao Forum for Asia. 

A report released by Boao Forum said although there were some good signs for Asia's trade performance in 2017, globalization -- the most important driver of Asia's economic integration -- faces unprecedented challenges.

Zhou Wenzhong, secretary-general of Boao Forum, said Asia should work out clear policies to deal with the structural changes of the global value chain and find new and innovative ways to grow.

"The most important thing is that we want to seek the solutions to the questions of how to promote Asian development, and where the driving force comes from. The development in Asia in recent years has been attributed to innovation and opening up. We will have multiple sessions to solve the issue of how to make Asia move on at such a high speed through innovation and opening up."

The report by Boao Forum shows that with deteriorating economic growth and growing trade deficits in the United States and some members of the European Union, the traditional model of Asia's global value chain faces difficulties.

It says new innovations in precise machines, robots, 3D technology and lower resource costs may bring some manufacturing capacities back to the developed countries.

The report also noted that the United States and EU absorbed 96 percent of the world's total portfolio investment in 2016. 

This pattern of capital flow would expose Asian economies to a high risk of capital flight and higher cost of financing. 

Zhou Wenzhong said that expanding Asia's internal markets is very crucial to sustain the further growth of the global value chain.

He said the Asian economies should spare no efforts to move collectively toward creating an integrated local financial market through determined reforms.

Former Filipino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo expects greater economic integration across Asia.

"At that time I was chairman of ASEAN. I said that we at ASEAN were looking towards greater economic integration with the robust economies of China, India and Japan. And I share this because now we are 11 years later, and if we look back to what I said then, many of them have come true."

Sudheendra Kulkarni, chairman of Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai, said China's continued reform and opening up will be beneficial to the whole world, following the recent rise of trade protectionism globally.

"To continue on the part of opening up and the part of reforms means two things: One, it is going to help China itself; secondly, it will help the world, because now, China has become a major engine of global economic growth. Western countries have become more and more inward-looking. They're becoming protectionist. They're becoming small-minded. And therefore, China saying that we continue on the part of opening up is very good for the rest of the world."

This year's conference runs until Wednesday in Boao, a town in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan.