China-ASEAN Expo to Further Advance Regional Economic Cooperation

Anchor: The 6th China-ASEAN Expo will be held in late October in Nanning, the capital city of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region.

China's top trade officials say preparations for the expo are well underway, hoping the event will further advance regional economic cooperation.

Zheng Chenguang has more.

At a press conference on Monday, vice Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said the expo will run from October 20th to the 24th.

He said since first held in 2004, the expo has achieved great success over the years. It has emerged as a platform for bilateral cooperation in various fields, ranging from trade and investment to tourism.

"In 2004, the trade volume between China and ASEAN made a breakthrough to stand at about 106 billion U.S. dollars. From 2004 to 2008, bilateral trade volume grew 21.6 percent annually. Last year, despite the adverse impact of the global financial crisis, the bilateral trade volume reached more than 231 billion US dollars, a hike of 14 percent year on year. This reflects the great potentials of economic and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN."

Expo organizers say exhibitors from China, ASEAN countries, the European Union, Japan and South Korea have booked more than 46 hundred booths this year.

What's more, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam will have individual exhibition sections.

Chen Wu, vice chairman of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said this year's expo will play an active role in tackling the global economic downturn.

"Besides those from China and ASEAN, purchasers from other parts of the world, such as the EU, Japan and South Korea, will also come to the event. We will also hold exhibitions featuring Sino-ASEAN cooperation and the necessity to jointly tackle the crisis."

The building of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, which is to be realized by January 1, 2010, has become another focus of the upcoming event.

The signing of the ASEAN-China Investment Agreement in August, together with the already-signed China-ASEAN agreements for trading goods and services, completed the negotiation process of the China-ASEAN FTA.

Gao Hucheng says China and the 10 ASEAN countries will form the largest Free Trade Area in the world with a population of 1.9 billion. Once the FTA is established, 90 percent of the products exported to each other's market will be exempted from tariffs.

"The comprehensive agreement will help create an open market for the trade in goods and services, which is even more open than the agreement of the WTO. Undoubtedly, the FTA agreement will help us tackle the financial crisis, boost cooperation in various areas, and provide a huge market opportunity for us."

Gao says ASEAN and China are mutually complementary to each other in resources and industry structures. He also says China is committed to further advancing its cooperation with the 10 ASEAN countries and will use the upcoming expo as a platform to facilitate the process.

Zheng Chenguang, CRI news.