Al Bakri Devadason said she values ASEAN-China's spirit of partnership, which goes beyond official meetings to touch the lives of their people through trade, connectivity, education, tourism and cultural exchange.

As this year's chair of ASEAN, Malaysia hosted the 46th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur in May and will also hold the 47th summit in the same city later this month. At the upcoming summit, member states will be joined by the bloc's regular partners - China, Japan, South Korea, India, New Zealand, the European Union, Russia, the UK and the US – as well as non-partner nations from Latin America and Africa.

Muhammad Habib Abiyan Dzakwan, a researcher at the Department of International Relations, CSIS Indonesia, said Tuesday's reception showed that ASEAN nations and the bloc's dialog partners would be able to continue finding "middle grounds and converging interests" despite their different perspectives.

"It was a beautiful moment last night to see not only Missions of ASEAN countries to ASEAN who attended the event, but also Missions of ASEAN Dialog Partners to ASEAN join the celebration," Habib told China Daily on Wednesday.

Regarding the GGI, Habib said ASEAN, China and other countries needed to adopt an "all-hands-on-deck approach to sustain multilateralism".

More initiatives to promote better global governance are required, and it is to be hoped that ASEAN countries could also come up with their own ideas about how to sustain multilateralism, he added.