RCEP Has Injected New Driving Forces To Accelerate China-asean Trade Growth

Doh Nam Choong, Consul General of The Vietnamese Consulate General in Nanning, said on May 21 that the RCEP(Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) has come into force, ushering in a more positive era of economic and trade exchanges between Asean and China, and the economic and trade cooperation between Vietnam and China has become increasingly closer, with huge potential for cooperation.

On the same day, the 4th ASEAN Development Conference and ASEAN Development Report (2021) conference jointly hosted by Guangxi University for Nationalities, Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences and China Association of Southeast Asian Studies was held in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The meeting will focus on the development of Southeast Asian regions and countries in 2021, focusing on the analysis of asean community construction in 2021, as well as the economic development, political situation and diplomatic strategies of ASEAN countries, and discuss and prospect the development of China-Asean relations.

With the RCEP officially coming into force at the beginning of this year, the economic and trade exchanges between China and ASEAN have become closer. According to China's General Administration of Customs, in the first quarter of this year, China's import and export volume to ASEAN reached 1.35 trillion yuan, up 8.4% year on year and accounting for 14.4% of China's total foreign trade. Asean has become China's largest trading partner again. Among them, China's import and export volume with ASEAN accounted for 47.2% of the total trade volume with RCEP's trading partners, accounting for nearly half.

"RCEP is an important milestone in ASEAN's efforts to promote regional economic integration. In the face of weak global economic recovery, rising trade protectionism and disruption of industrial and supply chains caused by COVID-19, the effective implementation of RCEP will help promote the building of regional industrial and supply chains and inject strong impetus to building a competitive, innovative and dynamic ASEAN." Said Zhang Jiashou, director of the Belt and Road Research Institute of the Party School of the GUANGXI Zhuang Autonomous Region Committee of the COMMUNIST Party of China.

Doh said that Vietnam and China have maintained continuous exchanges in various fields, deepened practical cooperation and deeply integrated economic and trade interests. In the first four months of this year, total imports and exports between Vietnam and China reached $55.99 billion, up 11.39 percent year on year. In the future, Vietnam will actively expand cooperation with China in various fields to promote post-covid-19 economic recovery.

How can WE improve the quality and efficiency of China-Asean economic and trade cooperation under the RCEP framework? Guangxi academy of social sciences institute of southeast Asia, deputy director of the southeast Asian country, guangxi academy of social sciences research and innovation team chief expert LeiXiaoHua think, should strengthen the construction of china-asean free trade area 3.0 strategy research, and start the negotiations as soon as possible, enhance the level of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and further promote the bilateral industrial value chain, supply chain integration development and upgrade.

He suggested that China and ASEAN could further deepen international cooperation on production capacity, explore a new model of china-asean cooperation featuring "multiple countries and multiple parks", build demonstration zones for high-quality development of international production capacity cooperation, strengthen cooperation in emerging strategic industries such as digital economy, new energy vehicles, 5G and artificial intelligence, and jointly build demonstration zones for innovative development of economy and trade.