Economic Corporation Trends

By：BPOC Update：2016-05-25

Economic Corporation Trends between ASEAN-China

Trade and economic ties between ASEAN and China have been growing rapidly over the past years, especially after the signing of the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation in November 2002 to establish the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA). The ACFTA was realised on 1 January 2010 and took full effect on 1 January 2015.

The 18th ASEAN-China Summit on 21 November 2015 welcomed the successful conclusion of negotiations to upgrade the ACFTA and the signing of the Protocol to Amend the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Certain Agreements between ASEAN and China and looked forward to its early entry into force. The Leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to complete the Future Work Programme expeditiously in order to achieve the twin goals of two-way trade and investment of US$1 trillion and US$150 billion respectively by 2020. The Leaders instructed the officials to address the remaining technical issues as soon as possible as well as the issue of strengthening production capacity cooperation for mutual benefit.

In implementing the ACFTA, ASEAN and China established an ACFTA Joint Committee (ACFTA-JC) in 2011, which met for the first time in April 2012 in Nanning, China. The ACFTA-JC’s main tasks include overseeing, supervising, coordinating and reviewing the implementation of the Agreement. In order to provide the ACFTA-JC with a legal standing, the Third Protocol to Amend the ASEAN-China Framework Agreement of Comprehensive Economic Cooperation was signed at the sidelines of the 15th ASEAN-China Summit in November 2012 in Phnom Penh. The ACFTA-JC has met 9 times with the 9th ACFTA JC Meeting held in Beijing from 26-30 October 2015.