Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Government China plans to initiate talks with Southeast Asian countries on improving trade relations towards a free trade area. This happened when the bamboo curtain country was again challenged by a United States (US) trade war.
Officials in Beijing said they would approach Asean bloc leaders this week to speed up negotiations on what they called the Asean-China “Version 3.0” free trade area. So far, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has been to Phnom Penh to discuss the issue at the ASEAN summit.
“Things have gotten more strategic these days and every commercial announcement has become more geopolitically related than ever rather than directing the tides,” Jayant Menon, visiting senior fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute Regional Economic Studies Program, told Reuters. of Singapore. South China Morning Post (SCMP)Thursday (10/11/2022).
ASEAN itself is made up of Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Together, ASEAN has a population of up to 685 million.
“The trade between China and ASEAN is worth $ 878.2 billion,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in September.
Meanwhile, the rise in ASEAN-China trade relations is suspected to be pressure from the US government on the bamboo curtain country. Washington recently exerted economic pressure through tariffs and restrictions on the high-tech sector, ignoring China’s involvement in its trade deals.
The United States established the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) to 14 nations in May to promote fair trade, supply chain resilience, and infrastructure improvements, including clean energy. China does not participate in this framework.
“Excessive maneuvering is one thing, deterrence is quite another. This is to prevent the IPEF from outperforming China’s industrial economy,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
“After Ukraine and after the trade war with the United States, China will have to think a lot about how to deal with decoupling,” said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii.
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