In just a few days, the quiet resort town of Boao in China’s southern island province of Hainan will be fully awakened, as thousands of delegates arrive for the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) annual conference, which will be held on March 26 to 29.
The BFA, sometimes referred to as Asia’s equivalent of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, every year, is an annual event that brings together national leaders, government officials, heads of international organizations, entrepreneurs and scholars from across the globe to offer the world an Asian vision of shared prosperity.
First convened in 2002 in Boao, then a small, sleepy fishing village, the forum was born at a time when China had just joined the World Trade Organization and when Asia was slowly recovering from the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Over the past two