Four dreams and a vision

The second dream is the establishment of an Asian community. The BFA's goal is to build consensus among Asian countries and promote Asia's integration through unofficial channels.

The regional cooperation that countries in Asia are promoting is encountering many obstacles, with the regional institutionalization level lagging far behind the pace of the region's political and economic development. Cooperation among China, Japan and the Republic of Korea is floundering, and the "10+3" mechanism with ASEAN at the core has hit a bottleneck after years of rapid progress. Besides, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the latest ASEAN proposal for Asian regional integration, also faces uncertainties.

Such sluggish progress on official-level cooperation has given the BFA and other unofficial platforms the opportunity to promote regional cooperation. The BFA's biggest advantage is its flexibility and low-binding force given the high political sensitivity in Asia.

The BFA started by promoting regional cooperation on low sensitivity issues and went on to explore unofficial cooperation platforms with lower-binding force by providing the region with multi-level communication channels for leaders in governments, businesses and the academia. The BFA has now started offering a reference template for official cooperation to promote regional integration through a two-track channel.

The third dream is to promote cooperation among emerging economies. Asia is now the most dynamic economic region and home to a number of emerging economies. Therefore, the processes of Asia's economic integration and emerging economies' cooperation have a lot in common.

In 2011, for example, the third BRICS summit and the BFA annual conference opened simultaneously in Boao, with China making elaborate arrangements to turn the BFA into an important platform for Asian and emerging economies to hold dialogue. Servicing the emerging economies has also become a new growth point for the BFA.

By providing a high-level platform for dialogue, promoting a win-win agenda and strengthening academic research, the BFA covers all issues that concern the emerging economies. As a forum, the BFA has done very well in "discussing ideological guidelines" concerning emerging economies.

It is hoped that the BFA will continue its innovative approach, put government support into full play and promote greater "pragmatic" cooperation among the emerging economies. The BFA, thus, could evolve into a platform for cooperation among the emerging economies.