Oriental wisdom opens new chapter of China-ASEAN ties(2)

NEW INITIATIVE -- MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL AND WIN-WIN APPROACH

Over the past ten years, China and ASEAN have maintained a cordial relationship thanks to political and economic interactions between the two sides. At present, China and ASEAN countries are gathering pace with economic restructuring, thus broadening the scope of cooperation.

China's new initiatives -- to upgrade the China-ASEAN free trade area (FTA), to build a maritime Silk Road and to set up an Asian infrastructure investment bank -- are of practical significance.

The China-ASEAN FTA, the largest one among developing countries, benefits a 1.9-billion population in total. From 2002 to 2012, two-way trade saw an average annual increase of 23.6 percent and topped 400 billion U.S. dollars last year, while the accumulated volume of mutual investments exceeded 100 billion dollars in the same period.

China proposes to launch negotiations on upgrading the FTA with the goal of an uplift in trade volume to a trillion dollars by 2020. In the next eight years, China's total import from ASEAN is set to hit 3 trillion dollars, while its investment to ASEAN is to surpass 100 billion dollars.

China prioritizes continental and maritime connectivity with ASEAN. To accelerate infrastructure construction for better interconnection, China has brought up establishing the Asian infrastructure investment bank. To build a 21st-century maritime Silk Road, China has set up a maritime cooperation fund of 3 billion yuan (491.7 million dollars).

In the financial sector, China suggests expanding the scope of bilateral currency swap and drawing up a roadmap for regional financial cooperation, so as to create a stable system for Asian currencies and an Asian credit system, as well as an investment and financing cooperation system in Asia.

China also signed plans with a number of ASEAN countries on economic and trade cooperation. For instance, China signed respectively with Indonesia and Malaysia a five-year plan with specified new objectives and key areas.

Upgrading the FTA will make it an experimental zone of "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)," said Huang Bin, an expert at Thailand's think tank KAITAI Research Center. He said this region will eventually turn into a mega economic zone home to about half of the global population and one-third of the world's total trade volume and output.

Japan's Asahi Shimbun said as the United States is pushing to open markets even further through the TPP negotiations, the Chinese stance is centered more on developing relationships while considering interests of other nations.