On July 2nd, 2017, the Network of East Asia Think-tanks (NEAT) Working Group Meeting on Collaboration among East Asian Small and Medium-sized Enterprises was held successfully in Changsha, the provincial capital of central China’s Hunan Province. The meeting was hosted by the Institute of Asian Studies of China Foreign Affairs University(CFAU). Professor Jiang Ruiping, vice-president of CFAU, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony.Nearly 25 representatives from Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, Japan and Republic of Korea (ROK)(10+3) attended the meeting.
The meeting focused on the following three aspects: Experience of ASEAN Plus Three (APT) in Developing Small and Medium-sized Enterprises(SMEs), Current Regional Cooperation Mechanism for Boosting SMEs and Suggestions Concerning Policies on Further Advancing the Collaboration among SMEs in APT. Representatives exchanged information on the status quo as well as the challenges confronted by their SMEs and further put forward many problem-based proposals. According to these delegates, due to the disparity among APT in their economic development and some other areas, the challenges confronted and experience gained during developing SMEs also vary from one country to another. Therefore, Regional Standard is a better option than National Standard to develop East Asian SMEs. That is to say, we should take the region as a whole while thinking about ways to develop these SMEs. Moreover, the delegates also stressed that government support was urgently needed to develop East Asian SMEs and, thus, the government ought to play a more effective role.
China will draw up the working group report based on the discussion and submit it to ASEAN Plus Three (APT) Summit this year.
