RCEP and the Vision of the Maritime Silk Road: New Frontiers for China-ASEAN Cooperation

On December 30, 2024, a sea-rail intermodal freight train carrying 90 containers of Indonesian shortening, Hainan coconut juice, and other goods departed from the Qinzhou Railway Container Center Station in China, bound for Tuanjie Village Station in Chongqing. The departure of this train marked the 10,000th intermodal freight train of the year on the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. Linking the Silk Road Economic Belt in the north with the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in the south, the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor has continued accelerating its development. In 2024, the corridor handled 128,651 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of foreign trade via sea- rail combined transport, representing a year-on-year increase of 24%. Of these, 87,846 TEUs were goods from member countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), accounting for 17% of the total freight volume – an increase of 32% over the previous year. This achievement offers a glimpse into the synergistic effects of RCEP and the joint efforts to build the Maritime Silk Road.

2025 marks the third anniversary of the implementation of RCEP and the tenth anniversary of China’s release of the Vision and Actions on Jointly Building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. As a leading force behind these two major multilateral cooperation frameworks, China and ASEAN have worked together to align the development of the Maritime Silk Road with RCEP, creating a model that departs from traditional trade and investment frameworks – one that is more equitable, mutually beneficial, and win-win in nature. This collaboration has effectively strengthened regional trust, enhanced the region’s international influence, and reinforced the resilience and integration of regional industrial and supply chains, thereby contributing to the improvement of the global economic governance system.

With the concerted efforts of both sides, a series of landmark China-ASEAN cooperation projects – such as the China-Laos Railway, the Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville Expressway, and the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway – have been completed in succession. These projects have effectively eased development bottlenecks in the region, including insufficient infrastructure investment and underdeveloped regional connectivity. In 2024, bilateral trade between China and ASEAN reached 982.3 billion USD, more than double the figure in 2013. The two sides have remained each other’s largest trading partners for five consecutive years. Negotiations on Version 3.0 of the China ASEAN Free Trade Area have been substantively concluded, which is expected to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers further, enhance trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, support development across the ASEAN region, and advance regional economic integration.

As we look ahead, China-ASEAN cooperation will not only inject fresh momentum into regional prosperity and development but also help drive the collective growth of RCEP member states beyond the region and countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Against the backdrop of accelerating changes unseen in a century, China and ASEAN are working together to uphold the multilateral free trade system, foster an open, inclusive, and non-discriminatory environment for international cooperation, advance inclusive and beneficial economic globalization, and promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.

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