ACFIC Chairman Huang Mengfu has called for deeper economic and trade cooperation and investment between China and the Association of South East Asian Nations during a forum and ceremony to mark the launch of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA), the world’s largest free trade area of developing countries.

   

Along with Huang, who is also a CPPCC Vice Chairman, some 300 experts, officials and business executives gathered in Nanjing, Guangxi Province on January 7 to discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by the two sides in the wake of the CAFTA.

 

Huang said China and ASEAN countries are close to each other both geologically and culturally with close high-level contact in the political field and active exchange in education, culture and tourism. “The CAFTA is a practical step in deepening bilateral cooperation,” he said.

 

Huang said the two sides should further their exchanges at various levels, deepen mutual political trust, work on their consensus and expand people-to-people contact.

 

He also called for enhancing the volume of bilateral trade and investment and carrying out social exchange and cooperation in technology, education, culture, health and disaster control.

 

The CAFTA was established on January 1, 2010, covering 11 countries, a population of 1.9 billion, with 6 trillion US dollars in combined GDP and 4.5 trillion US dollars in trade volume for 2010.

 

The agreement is a milestone in the history of economic cooperation between China and the ASEAN, as it is the first FTA agreement for both. It is also the third largest global trade group behind the European Union and North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA).

 

According to the official website of the CAFTA, under the FTA, the average tariff on goods from ASEAN countries to China is reduced from 9.8 percent to 0.1 percent. The six original ASEAN members, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, slashed the average tariff on Chinese goods from 12.8 percent to 0.6 percent.

    

By 2015, the policy of a zero-tariff rate for 90 percent of Chinese goods is expected to extend to the four new ASEAN members, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

 

China and ASEAN launched cooperation dialogue in 1991, and wrapped up the framework agreement in 2002, the commodity trade agreement in November 2004 and the service trade agreement in January 2007 respectively.