The Bo'ao Conference

I may have covered one of the Bo'ao (博螯) conferences held in China's Hainan (海南) island, but had not actually thought much about the significance of the conference, until I read Edward J. Lincoln's book "East Asian Economic Regionalism".

What Lincoln said about the meeting in April 2002 which brought together business people, government officials, and academics in a close imitation of the well-known annual World Economic Forum gathering in Davos Switzerland was exactly right.

He wrote: "The meeting itself appears to have been badly run, causing many complaints about accommodations and logistics. Technically, the Bo'ao conference was a non-government affair, with initial input from the Philippines, Australia and Japan. However, the Chinese government ended up with effective control of the event."

Lincoln added: "However badly it may have been run or how heavy-handed the Chinese government's de-facto control, creating a new forum of this sort was a very simple exercise in regional leadership. The Japanese could have created a similar forum at any point in the past twenty years, but they failed to do so. Instead, they were put in the position of having their arm successfully twisted by the Chinese government to have Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appear at the conference to make the keynote speech."

So Japan missed the chance to adopt a higher regional profile in the past, and Beijing had apparently stolen the thunder from Tokyo.

But if it is any (back-handed) consolation for Japan, the event was so badly organized that Koizumi reportedly flew into a rage.

As for my own experience, given my lowly status as a non-dignitary, I did not fly into any rage, even though there were certainly many minor and not-so-minor inconveniences. But guess by then I had spent enough time in China to take things in my stride. I even remember going for a swim in the hotel's outdoor swimming pool. The water was murky and cloudy though.