China and ASEAN have vast space for high-quality cooperation
The locomotive of Laos China Railway Co., Ltd. is waiting to depart at Vientiane South Station in Laos. Due to its unique geographical location and logistics transfer and distribution advantages, Wanxiang South Station has become a "dry dock" for the transfer of goods from China, Laos, Thailand and other countries. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Xing Guangli
The left image shows staff from the Tsim Chuk Bun Fruit Company stacking durian flesh in the province of Tsim Chuk Bun, Thailand. The company has been exporting dried fruits, including durian, to China since 2016, and its export volume to China increased by about 50% year-on-year in the first half of this year. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Wang Teng
The picture on the right shows a worker moving boxes near the construction site of the Yunding Tunnel of the Malaysia East Rail project in Pahang, Malaysia. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Cheng Yiheng
This year is the second year that China and ASEAN have become a comprehensive strategic partnership. It is also the tenth anniversary of China's proposal to jointly build the "the Belt and Road" initiative and the idea of working together to build a closer China ASEAN community of shared future.
The 43rd ASEAN Summit, which opened on September 5th, focused on multilateral economic cooperation with the theme of "ASEAN is crucial: building a center for economic growth". In this context, what new achievements will China's participation in the "10+1" and "10+3" frameworks achieve? How will the the Belt and Road Initiative better align with ASEAN's long-term vision? What new cooperation will both sides have in areas such as green economy, digital economy, and technological innovation?
The international community hopes that China and ASEAN will continue to adhere to true multilateralism, further promote common development, consolidate the foundation of public opinion, advance the process of regional economic integration, and inject lasting warmth into the prosperity and recovery of the world economy.
Share more development dividends
Although ASEAN faces long-term bottlenecks such as insufficient infrastructure investment and relatively lagging regional connectivity, its role in regional and even global economies is becoming increasingly important through strengthened cooperation with China. In recent years, China and ASEAN have jointly discussed development, sought business opportunities, and shared opportunities, further breaking development bottlenecks, releasing development momentum, and achieving fruitful results in deepening cooperation in multiple fields, enabling China and ASEAN to share more and more development dividends with each other.
Firstly, jointly increase the scale of trade. China and ASEAN have been each other's largest trading partners for three consecutive years, and continued to be each other's largest trading partners in the first seven months of this year. Data shows that the total trade value between China and ASEAN from January to July this year was 3.59 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.8%. In recent years, under the "the Belt and Road" cooperation framework, the two sides have continued to promote trade connectivity, improve the level of trade facilitation, and deepen the international cooperation of "Silk Road e-commerce"; After the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement came into effect, the world's largest free trade area officially set sail, further unleashing the potential for trade cooperation.
Secondly, jointly promote two-way investment. China and ASEAN are important investment sources and destinations for each other. As of July this year, the cumulative two-way investment between China and ASEAN countries has exceeded 380 billion US dollars, and China has established over 6500 direct investment enterprises in ASEAN. Both sides rely on the "Two Countries, Two Parks" to jointly build a demonstration park for economic and trade innovation and development, promote the construction of cross-border industrial chain cooperation relationships that meet the development needs of their respective countries, promote investment cooperation in digital economy, green development and other fields, and open up new channels for ASEAN countries to integrate into China's local open development.
Finally, jointly promote interconnectivity. The Phnom Penh to Sihanouk Port Expressway will shorten the travel time between the two places to within 2 hours, promoting Cambodia into the "high-speed era"; China and Singapore jointly build a new international land and sea trade channel, with a transportation network covering 393 ports in 119 countries and regions; The opening of the Jakarta Bandung high-speed railway in Indonesia is imminent... A series of landmark projects are playing a demonstrative role, further promoting technology sharing and experience exchange between China and ASEAN, and enabling mutual connectivity and cooperation to benefit more local people.
Through long-term and close cooperation, China and ASEAN continuously promote complementary advantages and resources, optimize regional industrial allocation, and promote deep industrial integration. This not only promotes relevant countries to move towards higher levels of economic and trade cooperation, but also effectively promotes stable and smooth global industrial and supply chains, steady global economic recovery, and provides opportunities for regional economic development to further align with the world, laying a solid foundation for ASEAN's goal of building an "economic growth center".
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsuti highly praised the cooperation between China and ASEAN, and hopes to continue strengthening economic and trade cooperation with China to jointly maintain peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo Pacific region. Li Xingyu, Executive Director of the Socio Economic Research Center of the Malaysian Chinese Chamber of Commerce, expressed his expectation that China will continue to expand its opening-up to the outside world, share prosperity with other countries, and help Southeast Asia and even the world economy steadily recover.
Mutual benefit and win-win, resisting anti globalization
As important multilateral partners, China and ASEAN countries have differences in social systems and economic development, but they can always firmly support multilateralism and provide a platform for expanding economic and trade cooperation with an open attitude of mutual benefit and win-win.
Looking back at history, amidst the sound of distant ship calls, Chinese merchant ships set sail from ports in Quanzhou and Guangzhou, chopping through the vast sea. Foreign merchant ships also rushed through Southeast Asian port cities such as Jugang and Malacca. On the Maritime Silk Road, merchants from different countries with different skin colors, beliefs, and languages respect and coexist harmoniously with each other, promoting the ASEAN region to become an ancient intersection of maritime trade between the East and the West. It also promotes the spirit of peaceful cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit, and the concept of a community of shared destiny, which has become the consensus foundation for the hearts and minds of China and ASEAN countries.
In the past 10 years, China and 10 ASEAN countries have signed cooperation documents on jointly building the "the Belt and Road", promoting the strategic alignment between the "the Belt and Road" initiative and Indonesia's "global maritime fulcrum" concept, Vietnam's "two corridors and one circle", Thailand's "4.0 strategy", Cambodia's "four corner strategy" and other strategies, and reaching consensus on promoting regional connectivity to form joint forces; Advocating for China ASEAN to jointly build the "Five Homelands" of peace, tranquility, prosperity, beauty, and friendship, reflecting the unique connotation of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two sides, and providing strategic guidance for the construction of a community with a shared future between China and ASEAN.
Currently, China and ASEAN countries are actively implementing the consensus reached by their leaders, moving forward along the path of good neighborly friendship and common development, and bringing tangible benefits to over 2 billion people in the region. But some Western countries, driven by their own selfish interests, attempt to form "small circles", undermine regional cooperation, weaken the role of ASEAN in the region, and hinder the efforts of regional countries to pursue independent development.
"As both emerging economies, development is the greatest common denominator for China ASEAN cooperation. Especially in the context of weak global economic growth, ASEAN adheres to strategic autonomy, focuses on economic development and regional cooperation, and strives to promote industrial upgrading. Under the consensus that the two sides manage conflicts through dialogue and achieve common development through cooperation, the two sides promote the docking of the the Belt and Road initiative with the ASEAN Connectivity Master Plan 2025, which will bring the two sides to a new stage of close cooperation. The current wave of anti globalization triggered by the United States and Western countries cannot stop the tide of China ASEAN cooperation." Zhang Jie, director of the Asia Pacific Security Diplomacy Research Office of the Asia Pacific and Global Strategy Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.
"The future challenges are getting bigger and bigger, which will trigger a competition among major powers for influence." At the opening of this summit, Indonesian President Joko Widodo proposed the term "challenge". He said: "ASEAN countries have agreed not to act as agents of any major country, and to cooperate with all people to achieve peace and prosperity." Upholding the spirit of win-win cooperation and the wisdom of seeking common ground while reserving differences, countries have worked together to overcome the difficulties of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Asian financial crisis, the COVID-19 epidemic and other difficulties, and are working together for a better future of Asia.
Deepen comprehensive strategic partnership
Looking back at the 30-year development process of China ASEAN relations, every time a regional or global crisis occurs, the momentum of cooperation between the two sides has become stronger, and political mutual trust has steadily increased. Faced with unprecedented changes in a century, expanding the cake of win-win cooperation between China and ASEAN, continuously deepening comprehensive strategic partnerships, and building a closer China ASEAN community with a shared future are the common aspirations of both sides.
The international community generally believes that this summit focuses on economic development, with most issues such as green economy, digital economy, and payment ecosystem closely related to China. It will become a new opportunity for both sides to accelerate the construction of a community with a shared future, deepen development strategy docking, explore new areas of cooperation, and jointly promote regional prosperity and development.
"Since the 'the Belt and Road' initiative was put forward 10 years ago, important progress has been made in the 'hard connectivity' of traditional infrastructure construction between China and ASEAN. Cooperation such as RCEP has also promoted the 'soft connectivity' of setting rules and standards. On this basis, industrialization and production capacity cooperation will become the key direction for China and ASEAN to jointly build the 'the Belt and Road' in the future." Wan Zhe, a researcher at the the Belt and Road College of Beijing Normal University, said that China and ASEAN countries have joined development stages, shared ideas, and complementary economic structures. There is broad space for industrialization cooperation, which can not only strengthen cooperation in some high-tech industries, but also promote more projects to promote inclusive development and improve people's well-being, so that people on both sides will feel more and more happy. The stronger we are, the more we can build a "heart to heart connection" between the people of China and ASEAN countries.
In the field of new industrialization, the development of digital economy and green economy industries is the biggest highlight and also the focus of this summit. Wan Zhe stated that in the field of digital economy industry, China will leverage its advantages in digital economy application experience, 5G infrastructure construction technology, and artificial intelligence application foundation to deepen cooperation with ASEAN in areas such as data security and smart cities; In the field of green economy industry, China and ASEAN will strengthen cooperation in the development and application of new energy technologies, green investment and financing, and green infrastructure construction, jointly promoting the transformation of green economy and sustainable growth development.
Zhang Jie stated that 2024 has been designated as the "China ASEAN Cultural Exchange Year", and this summit will also help implement the "Global Civilization Initiative", help restore personnel exchanges and cultural exchanges and mutual learning between the two sides, carry out exchanges and cooperation in multiple fields such as culture, tourism, and education, make the people of both sides more familiar, close, and compatible, and contribute more to the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind.
Share the opportunities for multilateral cooperation and development, and jointly create the potential for global economic growth. At present, China is promoting Chinese path to modernization with high-quality development, which will provide new development opportunities for ASEAN countries and show the world the development potential and infinite vitality of regional economic cooperation. I believe that China and ASEAN will continue to work together with the international community to move forward towards their respective development goals and jointly create a better future.
