APRIL 9 was the day in 1942 when the Allies surrendered Bataan to the Japanese imperial forces. April 9 in 2018 thus highlights the 76th anniversary of the Philippines’ entry into the scheme proper of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, conceived by Japan to free Asia from bondage to the West. Come that day at the start of next week, the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) 2018 will take place, the 16th edition of the annual conference since it began in 2002. This coming Monday, therefore, marks the 16th year of the entry of the Philippines into the great China Dream: a world community of common destiny, of a shared future, as elaborated on by Chinese President Xi Jinping in his speech before the 19th National People’s Congress of the Communist Party of China on October 18, 2017. For though the Boao Forum was a collective brainchild of former Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and former Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa in 1998, its domicile has been fixed at Boao in Hainan, the island province off the southern coast of China. So since 2002, the Boao Forum for Asia has become largely a Chinese enterprise – in all its ramifications. In fact, from that time on, Boao has been known as the Davos of Asia.