On the morning of February 26, the high-level plenary session of the ASEAN Future Forum 2025 took place in Hanoi.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh; Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim; New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President of Timor-Leste Jose Ramos-Horta attended the high-level Q&A session of the forum.
Discussing in the question-and-answer session, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized that any country, any association in the world puts the issue of self-reliance, self-reliance and strategic proactiveness first.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh mentioned ASEAN's central role in resolving conflicts and tensions in the world, in which he said that each country must have effective policies and actions for peace, cooperation and development, thereby creating the combined strength of ASEAN countries, inspiring and motivating other countries and regions around the world.
Regarding rule-based governance, the Prime Minister emphasized that governance of a country or world governance is based on law. "We must design laws to govern the nation and the world. When we have designed it ourselves, we must respect it and implement it effectively" - the Prime Minister noted.
Regarding cybersecurity, the Prime Minister said that, living in an era of intelligence and artificial intelligence development, we must " adapt, accept and overcome" the negative aspects of science and technology, the negative aspects of information technology and continue to promote the positive aspects.
We are very pleased that the United Nations chose Vietnam as the place to declare the Hanoi Convention on Cyber Security, demonstrating Vietnams role and adaptation to issues related to cyber security and possibly artificial intelligence security in the future, the Prime Minister shared.
Also in the high-level Q&A session, when asked about the prospect of ASEAN becoming the leading semiconductor chip manufacturer, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim revealed that Malaysia has been 20 years ahead in the semiconductor chip field with huge investment from many countries such as Germany, the US, and China. According to him, success needs to be shared.
He pointed out that countries in the region such as Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam... all have agendas to promote semiconductor chips for the prosperity of 700 million people in ASEAN, with the spirit of leaving no one behind.
He said that in the exchanges between Malaysian leaders and Vietnamese and Indonesian leaders, all sides supported cooperation in the semiconductor sector because each side had its own strengths. "We have many strengths and let's take advantage of those strengths to develop in the coming time" - he said.
The Malaysian Prime Minister emphasized the goal of protecting the people. He noted that the existence of ASEAN in general, of Malaysia in particular, is thanks to ASEAN's central role. ASEANs central role is the existence of ASEAN and the engine for our future development, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim noted.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand Prime Minister said that ASEAN and New Zealand are long-term dialogue partners, effective partnerships, and friends with the warm friendship of the past 50 years. He pointed out that the sides have many opportunities for cooperation, including in the fields of agricultural products, space missiles, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and cyber security. New Zealand can be an important partner for ASEAN to develop and escape the middle-income trap. For its part, New Zealand also learned a lot from ASEAN.
