NEWS

Sherly Budiman (College of International Management, 3rd year, Indonesia) and Zin Wai Htun (College of Asia Pacific Studies, 2nd year, Myanmar) took the stage as student commentators at ASEAN-Japan Business Week 2023, held in Tokyo from June 5 (Mon.) through June 9 (Fri.), 2023.

A wide range of discussions take place at ASEAN-Japan Business Week involving the business communities of Japan and ASEAN member nations on the direction of the economic relationships between the participating countries in order to create a new future for ASEAN and Japan in the spirit of friendly cooperation.

The two APU students took part in the June 7 session "Towards a community of innovation through co-creation and human resource development," where they joined businesspeople active in Japan and overseas to express their views from their perspective as youth representatives.

During the session the following three points were discussed:
1. What are the common challenges that you think ASEAN and Japan can work together on,
2. How can we leverage ASEAN’s diversity for value creation, and
3. How can ASEAN and Japan work together to maximize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and harness for value creation.

Sherly commented, "When discussing issues like this, we tend to generalize and see them as country-specific problems, but even within a single country there are multiple cultures. It is important to look at these things on a more micro level." On the third point, Zin opined "Minorities are sometimes ignored. We need to respect the opinions and perspectives of all people, and honor each of their views."

Other panelists introduced the issues and innovations in regard to getting ASEAN's top talent to work in Japan and Japanese companies, as well as the usefulness in business of securing diverse human resources. The discussion concluded with affirmation that the public and private sectors in Japan and ASEAN will aim to work together to resolve many common issues.

For more on ASEAN-Japan Business Week, click here.
Videos of the event are available at the above link.
To see the session where APU students participated, click here.

Panelists