At the beginning, Dr. Vu Le Thai Hoang welcomed the RSIS Delegation and expressed his pleasure to meet the RSIS’s experts once again since the DAV’s visit to the Singaporean top think-tank last year.

On his part, Mr. Adrian Tan expressed his gratitude for the DAV’s hospitality. He highlighted the importance of the MoU signed between the two sides as a stimulus to make DAV-RSIS cooperation even stronger than before. Mr. Tan noted that the RSIS has collaborated with various partners to organize big events and is looking for greater opportunities to cooperate with more partners in the region.

During the meeting, the two sides frankly and openly discussed the existing regional architecture and the current challenges facing ASEAN. Experts from both institutions shared the assessment that the world is getting more uncertain and unpredictable, posing both opportunities and challenges for regional countries to be better adaptable to the changing situation.

Amid uncertainties, there is still space for middle and small countries to leverage their own agency. With the emergence of new minilateral mechanisms, ASEAN member countries should find ways to make ASEAN-led mechanisms like the EAS, ASEAN+3 more useful and valuable in the context of new changes.

As an autonomous school within the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore, RSIS is consistently ranked among the top regional think-tanks by international publications. The DAV and the RSIS signed a MoU of cooperation during the high-level visit of the Vietnamese delegation to Singapore in early February 2023.

At the end of the meeting, all participants expressed their expectations for more frequent DAV-RSIS exchanges in an effort to effectively implement the MoU for the benefit of long-term cooperation between the two institutions.