The Third CICA Think Tank Roundtable was convened at Hongqiao State Guest Hotel in Shanghai on May 11-12, 2015 sponsored by the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS). The fact that this Roundtable was held in the context of this year’s marking the 60th Anniversary of the Bandung Conference and the 70th Anniversary of the World War II adds more significance to this Roundtable. Present at the Third Roundtable were 35 participants from Afghanistan, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand and Turkey. Ms. Xing Fangfang, the Chinese Senior Official to the CICA, delivered a keynote speech and praised the worthy contribution to the CICA by this Roundtable series. Besides, Singaporean and Thai Consulates-General in Shanghai also sent their observers to participate the discussion.

The Third Roundtable reviewed the Asian security developments since the convening of the CICA Shanghai Summit in May 2014. Generally speaking, there were three opinions in evaluating the past year at the Third Roundtable. The optimistic held that there was no imminent danger of irruption of massive wars, that the awareness of regional security and political willingness were on the rise, and that there saw some positive signs in the China-U.S. relations, management of maritime disputes in the East China Sea and the South China Sea and the improving situation in Afghanistan. The pessimistic pointed out that the dual structure of security and economic divergence is solidifying, that the most worrisome is the deepening strategic distrust between China and the United States, that the Ukraine crisis casts negative impacts onto the West-Russia relations and even the Central Asian economies, and that the Cold War mentality still affects the security thinking and actions in the region. And as always, there was a third school in between the two opposites of the opinions. Its main conclusion is that the situation did not go worse at least and that most of the disputes are controllable.

The Third Roundtable focused its discussion on the following five issues related to the CICA. Firstly, the Roundtable explored the status, conditions and causes of the relations between the emerging power of China and the established one of the United States. All the participants agreed on the rising of China, but differed on the U.S. declining or not. However, all agreed that the China-U.S. relations are critical to the security both inside and outside Asia. Secondly, the Roundtable had an intensive discussion on terrorism, extremism and radicalism. All the participants held that these Three Challenges should not be equated to any given religions on the one hand and that the international community should dig deep into their root causes of these Three Challenges and look for solutions on the other hand. Thirdly, many of the participants believed that presently some of the non-traditional security threats caused most losses of lives and properties, such as massive epidemics, Tsunami and other natural disasters. The recent earthquake in Nepal is a case in point. Therefore, the Asians should attach greater importance to dealing with these challenges. Fourthly, the Roundtable paid particular attention to the important roles of socio-economic developments’ in enhancing security of our time. Indeed, Asia has maintained the trends of developments while confronting with the down-turn pressure of the so-called economic New Normal. Asia has seen growing regional efforts in connectivity as well as financial and monetary cooperation. The continuously consolidated developments of economic growth, social cohesion and political progresses have served as important bases for Asian security. Last but not least, the Third Roundtable stressed the importance of putting the CICA into a broader framework of global and regional developments such as overlapping security mechanisms, economic growth and youth unemployment, and China’s initiative on the Silk-Road, i.e., the “One-Belt-and-One-Road”.

The Third Roundtable furthered its discussion on the Security Concepts with a view to the relevance to the CICA. Most of the participants believed that security embraces both traditional and non-traditional connotations, that the actors include both state and non-state ones, that security cooperation should be achieved in a multitude of ways at bilateral, sub-regional, regional and global levels. Relentless efforts should be made to add Asian dimension to conceptualization of security affairs. For instance, Asians should work at win-win cooperation, open and inclusive regionalism and compatibility between the Western and Eastern security concepts. Publicity of Asian security concept also needs to be improved. Some suggested capping it by “Mutual Security” or “Sustainable Security” for an easier understanding and remembrance by the broad masses of the people. Some suggested the importance of building up shared security cultures and even common values to underpin common security. And still others suggested fully using the Asian think tanks for more professional and academic outcomes.

The Third Roundtable made a great progress in discussing CICA institution building. There were mainly two kinds of relevant recommendations. One was to describe the guiding principles such as making full use of the existent mechanisms, incremental upgrading, focusing on the common denominators and providing intellectual and operational advice to the Asian leaders. The other was for concrete developments such as transforming the dialogue forum into an entity organization, regularly evaluating the summits, foreign ministers meetings and senior official meetings, setting up expert groups and thematic task-forces, preparing topic-oriented reports, prioritizing agendas, etc. Some participants re-emphasized CICA’s decades-old goal of being a comparable to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Some suggested more coordination with the ASEAN Regional Forum, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and such forums as Shangri La Dialogue, ASEAN ISIS and Xiangshan Forum. The participants recognized the role of such extra-regional power as the US while debated on how to define it. Still some expressed their hope that the Roundtable should strengthen its ties with the CICA Secretariat as well as member-states’ Senior Officials. In due course, the Roundtable should play a greater role in conducting “one and half track” or “second track” dialogues on the security and other related issues in the future.

All the participants took part in the roundtable in their personal capacity and expressed their own commitments to contributing to more rewarding Roundtables in the future. In the meantime, they also hoped that the CICA Think Tank Council’s preparatory work should be accelerated for the better networking and greater achievements. The Fourth CICA Think Tank Roundtable is preliminarily planned to be held in Shanghai in May 2016 with a view to matching up the would-be CICA Foreign Ministers Meeting. Furthermore, the SIIS has committed itself for continued intellectual, manpower and financial support, for which all the participants expressed their high appreciation and sincere gratitude.

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