It’s that time of the year again when all eyes turn to Boao, a small former fishing town in China’s southernmost island province of Hainan.

From March 25 to 28, the town will host the 2025 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference, an event at which government officials, heads of international organizations, business leaders and scholars converge to discuss the most pressing issues of the day—and ultimately formulate an Asian vision for shared prosperity.

This year’s edition carries the theme Asia in the Changing World: Toward a Shared Future, a call that perfectly captures the spirit of the BFA, which, over the past two decades, has become a kind of mark on the regional growth chart, by which the region gauges its annual progress.

Launched in 2002, the forum has witnessed Asia’s regional integration as it pulled through the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the SARS epidemic in 2003, the global financial crisis in 2008 and the recently concluded COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, the region once again finds itself on the cusp of change. “Our world is in the middle of a pivotal transition, where disruptive shifts are profoundly reshaping the international order,” BFA Secretary General Zhang Jun said at a press conference in Beijing on January 8.

“What this means is that the BFA, as a high-level platform dedicated to dialogue and cooperation, now stands at a new horizon, where it is charged with both greater expectations and heavier responsibilities,” he added.

Upholding multilateralism

A word that repeatedly surfaced in Zhang’s address was “multilateralism.”

In fact, this year is a milestone in the decades-long human endeavor to establish a multilateral system for global governance.

In 1945, the United Nations (UN), born from the ashes of World War II, was created with the goal of fostering peace, security and development. The decades that followed saw a burgeoning of multilateral institutions including the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor, the World Trade Organization, which together form the backbone of the contemporary multilateral system.

But this long-established international order seems to be eroding amid prolonged regional conflicts, escalating geopolitical tensions and the U.S.’ recent moves to upend decades of global engagement by withdrawing from multiple multilateral organizations. Additionally, trade protectionism is on the rise under a series of newly launched U.S. tariffs.

“The last time tariffs of this scale were in place was after the passage of the Tariff Act of 1930,” The Economist magazine wrote on March 6 in response to the tariffs introduced by the U.S. in late February, noting that the bill ended up deepening the Great Depression and causing the world to break up into rival blocs.

In response to these crises, this year’s BFA annual conference will feature a series of panels centered on Asia’s expanding role in safeguarding multilateralism. These panels will delve into how U.S. foreign policy may affect cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, how free trade agreements within the Pacific rim can further realize their growth potential and how the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), an inter-governmental forum that promotes free trade among its 21 member economies in the region, can play a bigger role in driving global trade.

As part of the BFA’s efforts to remain innovative in a constantly changing world, this year’s agenda will also introduce a new cluster of discussion sessions dedicated to specific countries in the region. The goal, according to Zhang, is to provide platforms where countries participating in this year’s conference can update the global community on their latest development and discuss possibilities of potential cooperation.

“One of the major challenges we face today is a crisis of trust,” he said. “This lost trust can only be restored through dialogue, and promoting dialogue is precisely what the BFA is good at.”

AI in the open

Last year, artificial intelligence (AI) emerged as a buzzword that rang through almost every BFA panel, as the world entered a frenzied AI race following U.S. tech firm OpenAI’s release of the GPT-4 generative AI model in March 2023. OpenAI said GPT-4 can “follow complex instructions in natural language and solve difficult problems with accuracy.”

“The rise of AI demands a complete overhaul of our old way of thinking,” Yuan Hui, founder and CEO of Xiao-i, a Chinese cognitive intelligence company, told Beijing Review on the sidelines of one of last year’s panel discussions, themed the Next Tipping Point in AI Development.

“Though the current narrative focuses on the AI race, we must recognize that no country or company alone can monopolize the use of AI, and that the ultimate end of the process is open-source collaboration,” he said.

A year later, AI development is already heading in the direction Yuan predicted with the sweeping debut of DeepSeek-R1, a Chinese open-source AI model that rivals the performance of leading American chatbots while costing far less to create.

This new emphasis on open-source collaboration has permeated this year’s BFA agenda, which devotes much attention to examining how Asia-Pacific economies can work together to bridge the global digital divide, facilitate cross-border data flows and achieve a balance between AI innovation and governance.

The Asia-Pacific region is racing to adopt generative AI at a pace that surpasses other regions, as heavy investments in AI research from tech giants such as Tencent, SoftBank, Alibaba and Samsung have created an AI startup ecosystem in the region.

According to data published by AltIndex, a leading investment platform, the region’s AI industry is the fastest-growing in the world, with revenue projected to soar 351 percent to $300 billion by 2030.

The prominent role that tech companies have played in driving Asia’s AI development is also reflected in this year’s BFA annual conference, which has created a slew of panels aimed at exploring how businesses can find their own unique niche within the global AI boom.

“Through these panels, we wish to promote a better use of AI in powering socioeconomic growth,” Zhang said. “At the same time, we hope that these discussions will raise awareness on AI governance, so that potential risks can be fended off and the technology can be directed to serve and benefit all.”

Hainan 2.0

In June 2020, China released a master plan to build the entirety of Hainan into a globally influential free trade port (FTP) by the middle of the century. An FTP system focusing on trade and investment liberalization and facilitation will be “basically established” in Hainan by 2025 and become “more mature” by 2035, according to the plan.

Since then, the island has scrapped import duties, lowered income tax rates for high-caliber talent, reduced corporate income tax rates for selected industries and offered 30-day visa-free entry treatment for nationals of 59 countries.

The province is also seeking to build itself into a new paradise for consumption where tourists can enjoy duty-free shopping, high-quality medical services and world-class live events. In September 2024, Hainan became a social media phenomenon as thousands of hip-hop fans flocked to the island from every corner of China for the concert of America rapper Ye, which many interprets as a test of Hainan’s enthusiasm to continue to open itself up to the world.

By the end of this year, the Hainan FTP will have implemented independent customs operations, which makes the 2025 BFA annual conference a special edition, Bater, Executive Vice Governor of Hainan, said at the press conference on January 8.

“The BFA’s commitment to openness is perfectly in sync with the vision of the Hainan FTP,” he said. “And I’m looking forward to how the two will deepen cooperation in the years to come.”

In line with Hainan’s ascending role in linking China to the wider community, the BFA annual conference will also feature a series of launch events that give participating enterprises the opportunity to showcase and promote key initiatives, research findings and major charity events.

“In my view, the BFA also stands for a ‘better future for Asia’,” Zhang said. “We believe that, through the BFA, more parties can participate in building the Hainan FTP into a platform for cooperation and shared development.”