The Small Town Connecting Asia to the World

The Boao Forum for Asia navigates a third global economic crisis at its 25th anniversary

Boao should not have mattered as much as it does. It is not a financial hub. It is not even a city.

And yet, the just-concluded Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) is once again pushing this small coastal town in China’s Hainan province to the central stage, drawing leaders, executives, and scholars to discuss Asia’s role in an increasingly protectionist, conflict-ridden world.

This year’s gathering coincides with a fresh bout of global economic strain, as surging energy prices—driven by tensions in the Gulf—ripple through markets and weigh on growth. It is, in many ways, a familiar moment, for the forum is now convening, for the third time, in the shadow of an external shock.

The recurrence of “new dynamics” in both its first and 25th themes is a quiet reminder: Boao was not born in fair weather, but out of crisis.

The Shock That Shaped Boao

In the summer of 1997, a currency shock that began in Bangkok tore through Asia with a speed that left policymakers stunned. The Thai baht collapsed, losing more than half its value. The Indonesian rupiah lost over 80% of its value within months. South Korea, one of the so-called Asian miracle economies, was forced into an IMF bailout package that came laced with austerity conditions written largely in Washington. The lesson was searing: Asia had grown wealthy inside a global system it did not shape, and when that system convulsed, it had almost no institutional infrastructure of its own to fall back on.

The response, though in the form of a China-based non-governmental gathering for Asia, did not originate in Beijing.

In 1998, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, former Filipino President Fidel Ramos, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and former Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa jointly proposed a vision: a high-level platform where Asian voices could set their own agenda.

Its formal establishment in 2001 was in line with another milestone—China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a moment that represented Asia’s most consequential bet on the rules-based trading order.

The timing was no coincidence. Long Yongtu, China’s chief negotiator for WTO accession, became the BFA’s first Secretary General, bridging China’s global integration with Asia’s emerging platform for coordination. Boao and Beijing’s WTO entry were, in a sense, two sides of the same wager: deep integration into globalization was the surest path to prosperity.

The name itself is telling. The Boao Forum for Asia is not just a forum in Asia, but one designed for the region while engaging the wider world.

Why Here：Location as Leverage

With a resident population of just over 30,000 today, Boao is no longer obscure. But in the 1990s, it was little more than a fishing village of around 15,000 people, with little to distinguish it even within Hainan, let alone China. Its selection as the BFA’s permanent site was, at first glance, counterintuitive—and, on reflection, deliberate.

In some ways, it is reminiscent of the model of the World Economic Forum in Davos: a small, quiet town hosting conversations of global consequence. As a non-governmental international platform, the BFA benefits from similar neutrality. Its distance from political and financial centers creates space for more candid and less formal exchanges that involve an array of incumbent and retired national leaders.

This kind of semi-official informality is crucial. BFA has, since its earliest years, been scheduled immediately after the close of the national “two sessions,” China’s biggest annual political event, thus serving as an early window into the country’s policy direction for the year and five-year span. Compared with official statements, the interpretation of policy signals here is more flexible and sometimes even bolder, which is welcomed by audiences from the political and business circles.

Geography adds another dimension. Hainan sits at the intersection of some of Asia’s most dynamic economic corridors—facing Southeast Asia, adjacent to major shipping lanes, and within reach of both Northeast and South Asia. It’s all about connectivity.

More importantly, Hainan, in many ways, encapsulates China’s own trajectory of opening up.

As early as 1983—when Hainan was still administratively part of Guangdong Province—a special document was issued to determine the policy of promoting the development of the island through opening up to the outside world, granting more autonomy in foreign economic activities.

In 1988, the newly minted province was designated the country’s first province-wide special economic zone.

Decades later, on December 18th, 2025, China launched island-wide special customs operations in the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP), the world’s largest FTP by area. The date echoes the Party’s landmark third plenum of 1978—the starting point of China’s reform and opening up.

As a vast free trade sandbox, Hainan is often compared with Hong Kong and Singapore, but with a much larger geographic and policy scope that enables freer flows of goods, capital, and people. With 74% zero-tariff products and a 15% corporate tax rate for encouraged industries, the FTP is already delivering: in its first 100 days, total import and export value exceeded 80 billion yuan (about 11.6 billion U.S. dollars), up 32.9% year on year; 737 foreign-funded enterprises were added, up 33.5%.

Boao and the FTP are not parallel stories. They are part of the same architecture for openness.

From Dialogue to Direction

Over 25 years, the BFA’s themes have repeatedly circled crisis and change, reflecting its core mission: to shape direction in an uncertain world.

Themes from the first decade were anchored in regional cooperation and integration, with early conferences framing “Asia’s rise” as both an economic imperative and an opportunity for collective action. For example, the 2001 founding conference was framed around the idea of “The Dawn of Asia,” and subsequent years focused on economic development and cooperation as Asia sought a shared pathway within globalization.

The global financial crisis of 2008 marked a pivotal juncture for the forum.

After Lehman Brothers collapsed, the world plunged into recession. At the 2009 G20 London Summit, leaders agreed on a global crisis response. The BFA, convened shortly thereafter with the theme “Asia: Managing Beyond Crisis,” was widely seen as a “second critical dialogue”—providing an Asian perspective on implementing the summit’s consensus.

At the time, China rolled out its 4 trillion-yuan stimulus package, while other Asian economies adopted expansionary measures. Asia became the primary engine of the global economic recovery, contributing over 45% to global growth in 2010, which indicated the balance of economic influence began to tilt. Boao, in turn, began to move beyond responding to crises toward engaging more actively in setting the agenda.

An interesting detail is that the 2010 BFA’s keyword “recovery” did not refer to the general economic rebound, but rather a green recovery. The then BFA Secretary General Long Yongtu illustrated that low-carbon and energy-saving technologies have created an excellent opportunity for Asian countries and other developing countries to “overtake on the curve” over developed countries. “For instance, in the traditional automotive sector, it will take a long time for developing countries to surpass developed counterparts,” he noted. “But in electric and new energy vehicles, with enough political will and attention, a rapid leap forward is entirely within reach.” And this argument proves solid today.

Over the following decade, BFA’s agenda expanded—from regional integration to innovation, sustainability, and governance. Concepts such as the “community with a shared future” gained traction through repeated articulation at Boao, reflecting an effort to frame globalization in more inclusive and less zero-sum terms.

By 2022, discussions had broadened further into security. Against the backdrop of the pandemic and geopolitical strain, China introduced the Global Security Initiative at the forum—signaling Boao’s growing role as a venue where economic and strategic issues intersect.

Navigating Complexity: What Role for Boao?

At 25, the forum faces a very different world from the one it was born into.

Globalization is no longer expanding in a linear way. Protectionism is rising, geopolitical divisions are sharpening, and multilateral institutions are under strain. As BFA Secretary General Zhang Jun put it this week, uncertainty now outweighs certainty.

In that context, the BFA’s role is no longer just to convene dialogue, but to help anchor a degree of stability in an increasingly uncertain world.

Part of that stability comes from China’s own trajectory. When the BFA was founded in 2001, China’s GDP stood at roughly $1.3 trillion. It has since surpassed $19 trillion—a transformation that former Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, one of the forum’s earliest voices, described as contributing to the platform’s relevance.

Today, what matters as much as economic scale is policy orientation: a shift toward higher-quality development, continued openness, and clearer long-term policy signals. For regional partners and global markets alike, this provides a degree of predictability that is in short supply.

That predictability is increasingly institutionalized. Former Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesuì identified four shifts that have quietly redefined Asia’s economic weight: the economic growth rate of Asia has consistently been higher than the world average, making it the engine of global growth; ASEAN overtook the EU and the United States to become China’s largest trading partner in 2020 and has held that position for six consecutive years; the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) entered into force across all fifteen member states beginning in 2022; and in 2025, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 upgrade protocol was formally signed. All these point to, as Zhang put it, a deliberate strategic choice by Asian economies to build regional integration as a buffer against systemic risk.

Boao’s role sits at the intersection of these dynamics. It is one of the few platforms where policy signals are clarified early, where regional initiatives are explained across different stakeholders, and where emerging issues—from digital governance to green transition—are discussed before they harden into divisions. In that sense, it functions less as a decision-making body and more as a space for pre-coordination.

That may sound modest, but in today’s environment it matters. When those entrusted with global order play fast and loose and political trust is thin, the ability to sustain dialogue, reduce misreading, and build incremental alignment becomes a form of stability in itself.

Boao will not resolve Asia’s—or the world’s—complexities. But by keeping channels open and expectations aligned, it helps ensure that those complexities remain manageable.