ASEM International Financial Reporting Standards Seminar was opened in Shanghai on March 25th, with a total of 95 delegates from ASEM members present in the Seminar.

As a follow-up to the Sixth Finance Minister’s Meeting of Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM FMM) held in Tianjin last June, the Seminar was initiated by China and Austria, the former and present rotating chairman of ASEM FMM, in cooperation with European Commission. It intends to probe into the latest developments of and current impediments to IFRSs compliance and international convergence in each participating country, so as to promote experience sharing in accounting standards setting and enforcement, enhance information understandability and comparability in the accounting profession, and, eventually, facilitate capital and commodity liquidity among ASEM members.

The two-day Seminar covered a wide range of topics including strategies for international convergence, fair value measurement, financial instrument, assets impairment, business combination, and so on. Chinese Deputy Finance Minister Wang Jun, Austrian Deputy Finance Minister Peter Quantschnigg and Director Pierre Delsaux from the European Commission attended and addressed the Seminar. In his speech, Minister Wang proposed “five suggestions” that call for our pursuit. They are:

(1) Taking effective action to promote international convergence. ASEM members and related regions should adopt an active attitude in face of the challenges so that the convergence would finally be achieved.

(2) Actively coordinating positions on international convergence. We should make unremitting efforts to improve ASEM countries’ influence on IFRSs strategic decision-making and standards-developing.

(3) Intensifying construction of standards implementation mechanism. We should work hard to attain the goal of providing quality accounting information and build up the bridge that brings closer trade and economic cooperation between countries.

(4) Strengthening exchange of experience. Asian and European countries should learn from each other in terms of IFRSs implementation and share with each other experience in implementing the new system.

(5) Strengthening ASEM accounting cooperation. Asian and EU countries should keep notifying each other about progresses and updated position and fully exchange ideas on major issues in order to reach wide consensus and conduct capacity building activities.