Shades of the past, but with an eye squarely on the future

Walking around Suntec City's convention centre for the 2018 Asean Summit and related meetings, you cannot help but carry a sense of bemusement at the twists and turns of history.

This was the venue, a little more than two decades ago, for the inaugural summit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. That late autumn in 1996, optimism was in the air with globalisation gathering pace. The East Asian economic miracle was toasted around the world, and business and political leaders from the region walked with a spring in their step.