The Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) kicks off in Shanghai on Tuesday.
The CICA is an international forum for strengthening cooperation to ensure peace, security and stability in Asia. The idea of convening the CICA was first proposed by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev in October 1992.
The fourth CICA summit in Shanghai is an event that can make a significant contribution to providing new opportunities to the Asian leaders whose countries are at critical stages of economic and social growth. The Asian leaders can take this unique opportunity to devise bold and innovative policies while pursuing regional and global cooperation.
They should take the CICA process to a new height that can win it the international recognition it deserves, and particularly to build upon the idea of the "Silk Road economic belt" presented by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2013.
Developing the Silk Road economic belt is important. The economies in Asia such as China, India, and Indonesia, present a model of growth at a time when much of the rest of the world struggles with austerity measures and economic recovery.
The key economies of China, India and Indonesia with large domestic markets and growth rates averaging between 6-7 percent have been a model of emulation for not only many Asian economies, but those around the world.
This no doubt, will be the century of Asia. Nevertheless, the region remains home to nearly half of the world's poor who remain deprived of the benefits of this rapid growth and development.
Nearly half a billion Asians still lack access to safe drinking water and infant mortality in many nations is more than 10 times higher than the levels seen in developed economies.
The Asian financial sector still needs to be improved for a large majority who have no access to simple banking and other financial services. Social services too remain pathetic.
Thus, while economic growth of some Asian economies may indeed be a successful story, a vast majority of Asia's poor and vulnerable are helplessly watching the chasm between the rich and the poor grow even wider.
The potential for reaching out and improving the quality of life for the vast majority of the region's poor lies within the region itself rather than looking for solutions provided by outside forces.
Asia has to take responsibility and stop looking at the future of the region and the world as a whole, through the lens of the Western world.
There can be no denying the fact that responsibility for the trickle-down effect of prosperity in Asia, the eradication of poverty, and improvement in education, social and financial sectors lies with the Asian governments. They should help stem the widening inequality by expanding regional cooperation and adopting more inclusive policies that would help build bridges of interconnected cooperation.
It is in this context that the countries in Asia need to build upon the proposal put forward by Xi of establishing the Silk Road economic belt. The proposal represents a blueprint for expanded cooperation among countries of Asia, Africa as well as Europe.
Xi's initiative represents the grand blueprint for deepened cooperation among Eurasian countries in the new era.
By promoting greater economic cooperation and more people-to-people contacts, the Silk Road economic belt would link different regions in Eurasia, enable the convergence of their different interests for complementary advantages, and enable the sharing of development opportunities to achieve common development.
The CICA summit in Shanghai must not be another mere photo session with Asian leaders in attendance, but an opportunity for a brighter future for the vast majority in Asia and beyond.
The author is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn