The 16th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Foreign Ministers' Meeting was held in Phuket, Thailand on July 23, 2009. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi attended the meeting and delivered a speech, expounding on China's views on the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and the future development of ARF.

Yang Jiechi said that the overall situation in the Asia-Pacific region tends to ease up and is full of vitality, vigor and hope. Peace, development and cooperation remain a prominent feature and an underlying trend of the region. In the meantime, the international financial crisis continues to spread. The prospects of world economic recovery are still uncertain. The complex situation in the Asia-Pacific region is worrying. Some regional hotspots re-emerged. The process of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is facing a serious challenge. The forces of terrorism, religious extremism and national separatism are threatening regional peace and stability.

Yang Jiechi said that the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), as the most representative official platform for security dialogue and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, has played an important role in enhancing the trust among the members, strengthening security dialogue and cooperation, and promoting regional peace and stability for the past 15 years since its establishment. ARF should continue to strengthen dialogue, enhance cooperation, reduce differences, promote the formation of constructive relations between nations, and take non-traditional security challenges as the main connotation of preventive diplomacy. Yang Jiechi said that terrorism, transnational crimes, maritime security, weapons of mass destruction, and other non-traditional security risks and threats are the realities and long-term challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region. To carry out cooperation in response to these practical security threats is the main task of the Forum as it enters a new stage of development. The Forum should maintain the nature of dialogue and cooperation and adhere to the effective and basic principles such as ASEAN-led, having equal dialogues, not interfering in each other's internal affairs, consensus building, step-by-step, and taking care of the comfortableness of the parties. At the same time, the Forum should be based on the reality, have innovative thinking, keep up with the times on the basis of inheriting the past, improve the working manner, be well prepared to deal with non-traditional security challenges, enrich and develop preventive diplomacy, and scale up the political and social benefits of the security dialogue and cooperation of the Forum.

Yang stressed that China is always committed to safeguarding the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and has played a constructive role for the healthy development of the Forum by actively practicing the new security concept featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and collaboration and strongly supporting the countries of the region to carry out multi-faceted and multi-channel security dialogue and cooperation. China will, as always, continue to support and participate in the Forum, adopt confidence-building measures and carry out practical cooperation in non-traditional security areas in an equal, mutually beneficial, open and tolerant attitude. The Chinese side is willing to work together with the members to enable the Forum to make a positive contribution to building a peaceful, stable and prosperous and harmonious regional security environment.

On the same day Yang also met with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem.