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Chiaroscuro: Bowwow At Boao Powwow

I contributed this for my Chiaroscuro column today, 07 March 01, in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com).

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07 March 01

malaysiakini

Only Bowwow At Boao Powwow

CHIAROSCURO

MGG Pillai

When Chinese business men constructed a huge conference complex on China's Hainan Island, in the town of Boao (pronounced "bor ah"), 100 kms south of its capital of Haikou, they also planned for an annual conference called the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA). It is a take-off from the annual Davos forum in Switzerland, whence the world's capitalists congregate regularly to revel in their successes, and decide their agenda.

A company called Boao Investments Holdings Co. Ltd. oversees this development of Hainan Island, with grand design of turning the island into a tourist paradise. There is a flurry of construction of hotels and golf courses, to make it rival Miami Beach or the Gold Coast. To give it intellectual respectability, it thought of the BFA, though almost as an afterthought.

The organisers hope the BFA will bring the world to its door, and make it the best known research centre in Asia. It is a tall order. Best known research centres cannot be founded on grand buildings, as the Boao complex is, but in the people and the facilities available. This one starts from scratch, and by inference would be staffed by Chinese scholars and researchers.

Which is why chancelleries in Asia are not keen about it. However you look at it, it would be seen as China's attempt to build a loyal following amongst Asian states as it girds its loins to keep the United States at bay. Whether it can or not is not the issue. It could. And the reservations come to the fore.

Japan is disinterested. Australia angry that Australia does not figure in the map of Asia in the Boao worldview. The Indian foreign ministry all but ignored it, although a former Indian prime minister, I.K. Gujral, is one of the sponsors.

Three retired politicians -- two prime ministers and a president -- were persuaded to suggest the Boao Forum for Asia. Several more jumped on the bandwagon. Two hundred founding members canvassed at US$500,000 each provide the seed money.

But this has its own setbacks. At least, the half a dozen Malaysians who became founding members are there not for what the BFA is for, but as political donations to keep on the side of the establishment in Kuala Lumpur. That should be an important reason many elsewhere did. But is this a sound way of establishing a think tank?

Boao Is Not Davos

The retired Malaysian diplomat and former ASEAN secretary-general, Ajit Singh, is its first secretary-general. The Malaysian prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, gave the keynote speech at its inaugural on Feb 26.

But Boao is not Davos. The BFA comes back to the Asian Forum that Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed has wanted. The East Asian Economic Group he wanted became a semi-toothless East Asian Economic Caucus. It is a search for an Asian Forum for Asians. But the BFA is flawed in that it is there to cut costs for the huge development now in Hainan Island.

There are already too many self-serving "talkshops" in Asia. Most lost steam after a few years, and survive because it exists though irrelevant, and it is a good excuse for a junket. For this to succeed, the BFA must be more than what it is, to attract Asian business and politicians to discuss what ails and strengthens them. There must be something in the gatherings to make people want to come, as for the Davos conferences.

The South-South summit is all but a dead letter. Dr Mahathir took the lead but no one else it seems wants it other than as a listless talk shop. The Langkawi International Dialogue, another Mahathir innovation, struggles to meet regularly in the Malaysian island and held these days more because the participants do not want to insult the host.

Far From The Madding Crowd

However you look at it, China and Malaysia wants the BFA. The Malaysian secretary-general should have invited as main speaker an Asian leader other than the Malaysian prime minister to give the keynote address; it should have been someone else. Indeed, Dr Mahathir after agreeing to be the keynote speaker, backed off but decided to in the end.

As it turned out, Malaysians only knew of Dr Mahathir and President Jiang Zemin attending the meeting. All others, including who attended it, were scrubbed out. The former Malaysian deputy prime minister, Musa Hitam, was on hand to affirm Dr Mahathir's hopes for the BFA. Many heads of government who attended went there for reasons other than the useful of the forum.

Ajit Singh expects the BFA to be "result-oriented", whatever that means; inevitable, he infers because it is the private sector which backs it. Perhaps. But the private sector looks for profit, not informed erudition on what ails them. And profit, at least in Asia, is dollars in your pocket, not some fanciful idea of a dialogue on what ails them.

Why Boao? The forum is China's idea, says Ajit, and "Boao is as far south from Beijing as it can get, and close to Hong Kong," with its town's "superb" facilities and quiet surroundings was "perfect" for large congregations. And, no doubt, attract inconvenient demonstrations against it severely controlled.

In other words, far from the madding crowd, as Davos is; but without the connexions, transport and otherwise. Is it with Hainan Island right smack in the South China Sea, over which China has territorial claims as has the littoral states around it.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my