 My name is John Andrews and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this session and it's quite a long way I suppose from the current obsessions of the news headlines because this is the Indo-Pacific region. We are going to pivot to the Indo-Pacific region not quite in the way that Barack Obama may have imagined but anyway I think clearly whatever the current crises are the medium and long term questions geopolitically and economically will be in the Indo-Pacific region. Now I have a wonderful panel here which I'll introduce in just a second but let me just say a couple of words about this Indo-Pacific region and about the title of this session. This session is about security concerns and economic opportunities and there's a lot to be said about both. I mean if you take the region it has I could argue far too many nuclear powers. You've got the US, you've got Russia, you've got China, you've got North Korea, you have some real flash points, you've got Taiwan obviously, India-China they may be members of the BRICS but actually they're often not quite at daggers drawn but pretty hostile relationship. You've got plenty of maritime and territorial disputes which I think include almost everybody actually every country in the Indo-Pacific region. Let's just take security first of all. There are so many acronyms and initials that we can festoon over this subject. You've got AUKUS, Australia, UK, US, sorry for France there but France wanted to sell its submarines to Australia and Australia said no and it came to the BRICS and the Americans so there we are but we'll put that behind us. AUKUS. You have US security treaties actually with Australia, with New Zealand, with Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and you've got non-treaty partnerships with the US, with India, with Indonesia, with Vietnam. So what if you think of that as one particular block what is the let's say anti-western? I was like a lady may not like the sort of anti-western idea but you've got China and North Korea I suppose that's the only neutral aid and cooperation friendship treaty that China has apart now from its no-limits strategic partnership I'm putting no limits in inverted commas with Russia with Russia with Putin of Russia. A lot of acronyms and initials for the economy we've got the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which I think actually became really from Central Asia rather than the Indo-Pacific region itself but does now include lots of players from Indo-Pacific including India. You've got ASEAN and ASEAN expands, you've got ASEAN plus three. You've got ASAP, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership which is ASEAN plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand. They can all see the economic potential of this region and therefore they see the virtue in collaborating and cooperating and of course you have the CPTPP the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. 11 members so far not yet China and rather unfortunately in my opinion America decided not to go for the TPP way back in the days when Harry Clinton was running against Donald Trump and finally you've got IPEF the India Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. I know nothing about this but perhaps someone else here does and that I think was launched by Joe Biden in Tokyo last year. Will it amount to anything? I don't know but clearly we have lots of security concerns and we have lots of economic opportunities so really I'm going to ask the panel to talk about that's you know almost binary fashion. Now let me introduce the speakers to my left Jean-Pierre Cabestin who speaks much better English than most English people despite being of proud Frenchman and as he revealed yesterday in a question to the former Chief Executive Hong Kong is now a permanent resident in Hong Kong. I hope that this panel will not get you chucked out but you never know. Jean-Pierre Cabestin is a professor emeritus at the Hong Kong Baptist University and was a senior researcher with CNRS in France. Yuichi Hoseya is the professor of international politics at Keio University in Tokyo. Kim Jong-un from Korea, South Korea as I realize he's on North Korea as well has a very distinguished career as a diplomat not just ambassador to Indonesia but also to the European Union and now representing the Korean Federation of Businesses. I got the right title I hope. Hervé Mariton very distinguished career in French politics and I mean he's also a very important man chairman of the Franco-British Council and really my plea to you Hervé is to try to get back my rights as a European citizen. Why you allowed Brexit to happen I do not know but anyway that's my problem and then MK Narayana the former senior advisor to Mamohan Singh who was very very successful influential Prime Minister of India. Long and distinguished career in Israeli intelligence sorry That's a slip of the tongue. Forgive me. Indian intelligence. Although I think perhaps they needed you in Israel. Exactly. You took the words. I think I did a better job than what they did in Hamas attacks. And also former governor of West Bengal and then last but definitely not least on this panel Doug Powell Douglas Powell who has been very influential diplomat he's been a very influential academic and a quite a successful businessman so you know large in the life almost but I think from this particular panel one should actually underline that he was once the American head of the American Institute in Taiwan that means that in the real world you were the American ambassador to Taiwan so I'll introduce you to that anyway that's your platform or your panel I think they're all tremendous