南方财经全媒体记者李依农 杨雨莱 博鳌、广州报道互联股票融资平台
On March 27, the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia 2025 kicked off with over 1,500 distinguished guests from more than 60 countries and regions, including world leaders, representatives from international organizations, and business leaders. With the theme “Asia in the Changing World: Towards a Shared Future”, this year’s forum features a more diverse and forward-looking agenda, focusing on four key areas: The Bigger Picture, Promoting Growth, Shaping the Future, and Identifying New Drivers.
展开剩余94%As Asia embraces globalization through active cooperation and exchange, we also face a world where unilateralism is on the rise. How can we revive multilateralism to effectively address global challenges? How can Asian countries, through open regional cooperation, promote true multilateralism and improve global governance? This has become one of the key focuses for many participants at this year’s forum.
Guy Ryder, United Nations Under-Secretary-General
It's my first visit to the Boao Forum. The reason I wanted to be here and thank the organizers is because they provided space for discussions on the subjects. We call them a safe space. That is a space where you can talk very openly, very freely. We haven't got to make decisions. We haven't got to adopt resolutions. So people can think and talk in a very open way about difficult issues. And the difficult issue, I wanted to bring here, was indeed the future of multilateralism.
But we know that many people are asking questions about the value of the multilateralism. The tendency towards unilateralism is on the rise. At the same time, we know that the global problems that we have are not finding adequate solutions from the multilateral trading system.
There are more than 50 conflicts going on in the world today. We think of the ones in Ukraine. We think of the ones in the Middle East. But there are more than 50. The African continent has a very large number of conflicts. We're not ending them, we're not stopping them, we're not preventing them. Climate change, again, is going ahead more quickly than our capacity to stop it. We have to find better ways of responding to it. The global development is not working. Poverty is increasing. Much of the developing world has extraordinary debt problems. They paid more to service their debts than they spend on health and education in many cases. The only way to answer these challenges is through multilateralism, and we have to do better. But we're not naive, we know there are serious obstacles. Sometimes we're going in the wrong direction, but I think it is through these safe spaces of discussion, we can find new ways forward.
One thing I think which is missing in the global conversation is trust. I've never known a time and I've been in the international system a long time. I think this is a time when there is more mistrust between countries than ever before and trying to get trust back together, back in place is very important. Places like the forum here are places where we can talk and begin to think in new ways.
It's absolutely true that at a time when the United Nations is challenged, by many countries in a world where we have many conflicts, the international rule of law is not generally respected. There are many violations of rights around the world. It is very encouraging that China still speaks out strongly in favor of multilateralism. China is a very powerful country, a very big country with a very important economic presence in the world.
But China recognizes that no one country, even a big country, can solve the problems of today on its own. We need to work together. So advancing national interests in the view of China means cooperating with others. So China's political support for multilateralism is strong. And this is extremely important in these sometimes difficult moments.
In today’s world of economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions, trust and cooperation are critical to driving and maintaining global economic development. Given these challenges, how can countries build stronger relationships and work together to ensure mutual prosperity?
Jennifer Shipley, Council Member of Boao Forum for Asia, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand
China continues to make a very important contribution in urging the World Trade Organization (WTO) to be functional. So multilateralism, you see international framework. And China's voice is important here. We need to be able to take out suits to the WTO, as a center of encouragement and fairness.
But coming back to what else China do? China is trying to become part of some other free trade agreements. And these are exciting moments whether China can meet the requirements and the CPTPP is a good example of that over time. I personally hope that we will see China in that framework. Because China will benefit, and those of us who are already in there, will benefit as well. And that actual structure had its origin in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 1999 in New Zealand.
The story of where we are now is an evolution of a group of like-minded countries that are committed to multilateralism in a regional sense, have been able to advance high standards and a good framework and then invited other countries to opt in and to meet those standards. So China can participate, as it works to see whether or not it's at their interest and in the group's interest and I'm very optimistic that this will be a set.
I'm a very strong supporter of APEC. It's not a free trade agreement, but it's a loose coalition of the largest part of the population of the world. 60% of the world is represented by the APEC group. APEC allows a fresh voice every year and whoever is host country can sit at home for what happens.
South Korea is going to host APEC this year. It was a very interesting grouping because it tries to improve the business environment. It's very focused on businesses doing business, smoothing away uniform customs arrangements, uniform entries to countries, reducing costs and complexity, and accelerating the interoperability of our economies. And these actions give people confidence, and confidence matters at this moment. Because if the businesses don't have confidence, they just sit back and they won’t invest and they just wait until conditions improve.
So APEC is a very important system and I'm very hopeful both that South Korea and China will set strong agendas of what we can do, and how we can do it, and leveraging the strengths of it that countries who want to be part of it. And even in the APEC group, you don't have to be part of it if you don't want to. But it doesn't wait and says keep up or catch up. We're not waiting because we are committed to constant improvement.
And I'm very hopeful that China, South Korea first and then China, will make this a focal point of a strong voice clarity, encouraging people to participate and move in, bringing forward good ideas that make it easier to do business and invest and co-invest. Reciprocity in the APEC context of win-win is a very important time. So China can do many things at different tables and you are still a very important leader in the region.
With China playing such a central role in regional economic development, the country, alongside its neighbors, has an opportunity to foster dialogue and deepen collaboration, creating a more connected and prosperous future.
Kishore Mahbubani, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore Distinguished Fellow
There's no question. The one country that has contributed more to global economic growth, certainly over the last 20 to 30 years, has been China. China's economic growth is good for the world. And so certainly we in ASEAN, I come from Singapore, which is a member of ASEAN, we have benefited a lot from China's rise.
In fact ASEAN trade with China has gone from (about) $40 billion in 2000 to almost $1 trillion in 2022. So whatever progress China makes in its economic growth, it's good for ASEAN. It also means that when China slows down, it's not good for ASEAN and also not good for the rest of the world. So the rest of the world would like to see the China's economic growth continue.
We are going to enter a much more trouble world because there are many major global power shifts happening. And I keep talking, and I just spoke earlier, and I say we are moving into a new “3M” world: Multicivilization, Multipolarization and Multilateralism. And in this new “3M” world, we have to get to understand each other better and we need to talk to each other. The Boao Forum brings together people from all over the region and from the world to come and talk to each other. That's a very important contribution that the Boao Forum is making.
Chief Producer: Yu Xiaona
Supervising Producer: Shi Shi
Editor: He Jia
Reporter: Li Yinong, Yang Yulai
Video Editor: Li Qun, Cai Yutian
Photographer: Li Yinong
New Media Coordination: Ding Qingyun, Zeng Tingfang, Lai Xi, Huang Daxun
Overseas Operations Supervising Producer: Huang Yanshu
Overseas Content Coordinator: Huang Zihao
Overseas Operations Editors: Zhuang Huan, Wu Wanjie, Long Lihua, Zhang Weitao
Produced by: Southern Finance Omnimedia Group互联股票融资平台
发布于：广东省