From 1.0 to 3.0 China-ASEAN Free Trade Area Upgrade

From 1.0 to 3.0 China-ASEAN Free Trade Area Upgrade

The second round of negotiations on China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 was held in Bangkok, Thailand a few days ago. The two sides discussed further opening up and cooperation in the fields of digital economy, green economy, trade in goods, investment, small, medium and micro enterprises. The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 negotiation was announced in November 2022. In February this year, the first round of negotiations was held online, and this round of negotiations was the first offline negotiation held by the two sides.

The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area started construction in 2002, was completed in 2010, and was upgraded to version 2.0 in 2019. Now it has entered the negotiation process of version 3.0. "In the past ten years since the establishment of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, the scale of intra-regional trade and investment has expanded rapidly, and the trade and investment effects of regional integration have become increasingly apparent." Wang Qin said.

Wang Qin said that during the operation of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, China and ASEAN have successively launched the "Belt and Road" initiative and RCEP, and their development goals and cooperation priorities have many similarities or similarities, which is the strategic docking and cooperation between the two sides. Regional cooperation provides real conditions. The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area has played an important role in promoting the interconnection, production capacity cooperation and people-to-people exchanges of the "Belt and Road" construction. cooperate.