On July 3, Wang Yi, China's top top diplomat and a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo, made a provocative comment about “Asian values” at the 2023 International Forum for Trilateral Cooperation in Qingdao, in East China's Shandong province.
He said that “China, Japan and South Korea, as well as other Asian countries, should practice open regionalism, promote inclusive Asian values, cultivate strategic autonomy, safeguard regional unity and stability, resist the Cold War mentality and avoid coercion by hegemony.”
Among many problems associated with minister Wang’s comments is that Asian values are much like the concept of the so-called Global South, Asians and the Global South are politically, economically and diplomatically heterogeneous with few common threads.