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Asia has a great future; we here in the Philippines will benefit from this Asian prosperity.

Especially in the West, people want to understand Asia on a deeper level because it's become the engine of the world economy, like it or not.

I am firmly convinced that, in future years, China and India will join hands in playing a more active role in maintaining peace and stability in the region and the world at large and make due contribution to the cause of human progress and development.

The fact that the Bush administration, and those in Europe who have followed its 9/11-inspired agenda, somehow believe that the future of the world is being played out in the Middle East and Central Asia rather than East Asia has only served to accelerate China's rise and the U.S.'s decline.

In this century, the 21st century, the U.S. recognizes our prosperity and our security depends even more on the Asia-Pacific region.

China is growing very quickly and is clearly becoming an important player in the world economy.

Asean is obviously a very important association for us. Over the past 30 years Asean has made great strides in regional cooperation covering a number of areas, although recently it has been under strain because of the financial crisis and other challenges.

The nation will benefit in the long term if it continues to be open to foreign expertise. This will help the country to establish its business culture and environment faster, based on international best practice.

Another goal is to look to the resources we have and to see how we could do better to plan, in a sense, for the faculty and infrastructure that we will need to study Asia well into the 21st century.

From another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large.