The annual Boao Forum for Asia, held this year from April 8 to 11, attracted much attention from Chinese scholars. Many have commented using keywords including openness, innovation, globalization and regional cooperation.

Ni Yueju, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of World Economics and Politics, quoted President Xi Jinping's keynote speech at the forum, which referred to the reform and opening-up policy as China's second revolution, and said that by making such a judgment, Xi was showing to Asia and the world China's determination, confidence and courage to open further.

Ni said globalization is an irreversible trend, and China will make even bigger strides on the course of the "revolution".

In another article, she said China has been promoting globalization and an integrated Asia, while the United States, under the Trump administration, is advocating unilateralism and protectionism.

"At this crucial time, Asia and the whole world need inclusive and balanced development more than ever before," she said. "Asian economies need a new round of opening-up and innovation to achieve sustainable prosperity."

Zhang Weiwei, head of the China Institute at Shanghai's Fudan University, was a participant to the Boao Forum. He said during an interview with China Central Television that globalization has influenced all countries, and China is one of the few that has secured large benefits from it.

"Western countries actually are beneficiaries, too, but not their people," he said. "Many ordinary people are marginalized while multinational companies and capitalists have made big money."

"The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China is a new type of globalization that seeks win-win cooperation to make the majority of countries and their peoples beneficiaries."

Now that China is the world's largest trader and top trading partner of nearly 130 countries and regions, the globalization trend will continue its profound influence so long as China promotes it, even if some de-globalization processes emerge in Europe and protectionism in the US, Zhang said.

Both Ni and Zhang mentioned the ongoing trade conflict between China and the US, a hot topic for weeks. Zhang's colleague, Chen Ping, said China would be in a defensive position if a trade war breaks out.

Chen's argument is based on analysis of the nature of nations. The Chinese nation is a defensive nation, and never an offensive or expansive one. There are two kinds of offensive or expansive nations throughout history — the hordes, such as the Huns, and the pirates, such as the Vikings.

Chen said Donald Trump is a "president of bad luck": three natural disasters happened in his first year in the White House, along with "Russiagate" and a prostitution scandal. He is in desperate need of some quick moves to shift people's attention and improve his image.

"As a businessman, he knows bargaining well," Chen said. "He thinks a trade war will bring him quick benefits, but I think he has not considered the issue carefully."

The trade conflict reflects the US' strategic anxiety about China’s development, according to Chen Wenling at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

"What the US is most afraid of is China's development in the high-tech sectors and the manufacturing industry," she said.

Made in China 2025 is a government-backed action to support the development of high-tech industries, just like the Information Superhighway program in the US under the Clinton administration, the High-Tech Strategy 2020 for Germany and Japan's robot strategy.

Some US scholars say the Chinese government is forcing US companies to transfer their technology, while others say it would be wrong to introduce China to the World Trade Organization, letting it become a rival of the US. These are misunderstandings and miscalculations, Chen said, and people must have a clear understanding of what stage of development China is in.

In his keynote speech at the Boao Forum, President Xi also reviewed the success of the past 40 years of reform and opening-up.

Analyzing the huge economic success since the policy started, Yao Yang, dean of Peking University's National School of Development, found three reasons: pragmatic attitude of the government, economic growth-centered policies regardless of the demands of certain interest groups, and devolution of administrative power to lower levels to motivate local governments to develop local economies.

Zhang Yunling, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Academic Division of International Studies, related the reform and opening-up policy to national security.

"The dawn of reform and opening-up brought prosperity and power to the country, having rapidly improved China’s economic, scientific and technological development, national defense capabilities as well as its comprehensive national power," he said.

"By prioritizing economic development above all else, China also actively created favorable security conditions to ensure its development. While emancipating and developing productive forces and improving the efficiency of resource allocation, the country transformed the way it managed relations with the outside world through taking the initiative to mend and develop its relations with other countries and alleviating external security threats."

He also gave suggestions on how to create a favorable security environment and build a new type of international relations and global order, including advocating shared growth through discussion and collaboration in its process of creating a peaceful environment for development, settling disputes in a peaceful way, and building a stable framework of major power relations with coordinated and balanced development.

A report on China's reform was released on April 9 by the Chinese Academy of Governance and Beijing Normal University' China Academy of Social Management, noting that China last year continued to promote reform of the social system, increased social security, and optimized social governance to build a fairer and safer society.

Yet despite achievements, the report said challenges still exist, such as a large income gap, an aging population structure and difficulties in governance at the grassroots level.

Although science and technology have always been the driving force of development, they sometimes cause serious problems. The recent user data leak scandal of Facebook is an example that aroused international concern about privacy and security.

Zhang Zhun from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences called for data protection in the era of the internet.

"Vague expressions such as 'We may collect your information when necessary and share it with other companies' are seen everywhere," he said. "But as common users, people hardly know when is necessary, how big the possibility is, or who those companies will be."

He said the key to solving the problem is to give more rights to users, giving them a "privacy control panel", enabling them to withdraw and delete their personal information after services, and allowing them to decide what information they want to share, and with whom.

It is equally important for internet platforms to improve transparency of how they collect and process user data and enhance their accountability, auditing and tracing of data if they are stored and used by a third party, to make sure the usage is authorized by users.

New headaches brought by new technology also include confusing cryptocurrencies such as the bitcoin. Huizhibin, also from the SASS, summarized a number of major countries' attitudes toward bitcoin, and listed the main risks: It is vulnerable to deliberate technical rule change; the market is easily manipulated by major bitcoin holders; and it offers an ideal place for opportunists and lawbreakers as the market is not under the supervision of traditional currency management authorities.

Zhang Zhao is a China Watch researcher.

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