BOAO (China), April 23: Businesspeople and officials met in China’s southern resort town of Boao on Saturday to discuss ways to promote economic cooperation in Asia. The emergence of China as an economic power with huge regional clout formed the background of the debate, and many remarks dwelled on the issue of whether China should be seen as a threat, challenge or opportunity.

“China’s ‘peaceful emergence’ is in everyone’s interest,” Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s elder statesman, told the Boao Forum for Asia. “An ‘unpeaceful rise’ will mean conflict and chaos in the entire Asia-Pacific region.”

China’s fourth most powerful man, Jia Qinglin, extended what he said a “solemn pledge” that his country would never seek to dominate the region.

“There is neither reason nor possibility for us to threaten anyone,” he said. “Even if China gets more developed

in the future, it will never seek hegemony.”

China’s capacity to wreak havoc on global energy markets were a top issue in discussion in the non-governmental forum, which aims to become a regional equivalent to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Now China’s economic development is very fast, but it will by no means lead to strained energy supplies worldwide. It’s not the case,” said Ma Kai, chairman of the cabinet-level National Development and Reform Commission.

“Foreign energy supplies might become a useful supplement to domestic supplies,” he said.

But he also showed that China was still intent on promoting its own national interests, meeting on the sidelines with former Taiwanese premier Vincent Siew for talks on increased economic cooperation.

“The talks were very warm, very cautious,” Siew, a former vice presidential candidate for the opposition Nationalist party, told AFP after his 40-minute meeting.

Meanwhile, Jia sought to reassure the region over its voracious economy, promising that even in 2020 imports would only make up a small proportion of its energy consumption.

“We should be aware that China is not just a big energy consumer, it’s also major producer of energy,” Jia said.

“Imports only account for a small part of China’s energy consumption ... according to our estimate, in the year 2020, the imported energy will only account for a small proportion of all the energy consumed by the country.”

While China is not going to decrease its energy consumption, a combination of conservation and search for additional energy resources will keep China supplied mainly by domestic sources, he argued.

Adding to the argument that China was more of an opportunity for the region, the Boao forum issued a report suggesting that the opening of its economy had been overwhelmingly beneficial for the region.

Indeed, China’s economic reforms had done more to boost intra-regional trade than the efforts of regional organizations such as the Association for Southeast Asian Nations, according to the report, “Economic Integration in Asia”.

Hong Kong’s caretaker leader Donald Tsang Saturday said there was an “overwhelming” case for a single Asian currency, but that the objective had to be attained in a step-by-step manner.

“The case for a single Asian currency is overwhelming,” he told the Boao gathering.

He pointed out that the vast diversity of the Asian economies made it an extremely difficult task to bring about a single currency in the region.

“We must create the conditions for greater free trade in financial services before we can even begin to talk about monetary integration,” he said.

He urged Asian governments to remove hurdles to increased trade in financial services as a first step towards the eventual objective of a single currency in Asia.—AFP