Chinese and Southeast Asian officials and financial experts on Tuesday urged the countries to strengthen financial cooperation, stressing it is crucial to stability in the countries, the region and the world as a whole.

 

Ten years after the financial crisis that swept Asia and crumbled the results of development in many Asian countries, especially those in Southeast Asia, to dust, financial experts gathered in the southern China city of Nanning to discuss what should be drawn from the "bloody lesson".

 

"We have learned from the crisis that only by strengthening financial cooperation can we ensure stability," said Ng Lip Yong, Malaysia's vice minister of trade and industry, at a forum during the four-day China-ASEAN Expo due to close in the southern China city of Nanning on Wednesday.

 

"If we had had an effective financial cooperation mechanism at that time, the financial crisis might have been avoided," he added.

 

Now it has become a consensus of economists in China and Southeast Asian countries to accelerate financial cooperation to meet the demand for guarding against financial crisis and establishing a free trade area covering China and the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

 

Under such circumstances, dialog on regional fiscal and financial policies cooperation in institutional capacity building have been strengthened, while leading financial institutions have targeted the other countries in the region as their potential market.

 

However, Bank of China Vice President Wang Yongli warned it is a must to strengthen a country's financial system and regulation. "Establishing a sound financial system in a country could avoid financial bubbles and risks from increasing to some extent," Wang said.

 

Chartsiri Sophonepanich, president of the Bangkok Bank, Thailand, called for better management of capital and foreign exchange reserve of the ASEAN and China.

 

The China-ASEAN region has become one experiencing the fastest economic growth in the world, holding about half of the world's foreign exchange reserve.

 

"If we only rest on buying US treasury bonds with our foreign exchange reserve, it will not bring any force to drive our economic development though it is safe to do so," he said.

 

The Thai banker suggested using foreign exchange reserve to invest in the Asian bond market, which, together with the establishment of an even wider regional bond and financial market and effective regional financial cooperation and coordination, could help reduce the adverse impact of unpredictable economic crisis.

 

He also called for the establishment of an Asia monetary organization to facilitate trade and investment in the region.

 

Mochtar Riady, chairman of Indonesia's Lippo Group, suggested taking the Chinese currency as the basic currency for regional trade cooperation and designing the Asia dollar based on it.

 

Zhai Kun, senior Chinese researcher on Southeast Asia study, urged the academic circles to cooperate in the study of financial crisis itself so as to be able to make quick judgment and prediction before crisis arises.

 

"No one of us can ensure financial crisis that might emerge in the future would be the same as the one ten years ago," he said.

 

However, financial experts say, as China and ASEAN member countries have enhance financial regulation and participate in international financial cooperation, their ability to guard against and deal with crisis has improved markedly. They will no longer stay helplessly once crisis arise again.

 

(Xinhua News Agency October 30, 2007)