Bilateral trade between China, ASEAN continues to strengthen: authorities

Economic and trade ties between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have steadily strengthened over the past decade, senior officials with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday.

The ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Speaking at a press conference in Beijing, senior officials from the ministry said that trade between China and ASEAN has grown at an average annual rate of 7.5 percent since 2013, with bilateral trade between the two sides reaching 911.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

China has been ASEAN's largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years, while ASEAN has remained China's top trading partner for four consecutive years.

In the first eight months of 2024, total trade between China and ASEAN reached 4.5 trillion yuan (about 632 billion U.S. dollars), a year-on-year increase of 10 percent.

By July, cumulative two-way investment between China and ASEAN had surpassed 400 billion U.S. dollars.

The successful implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which comprises 15 Asia-Pacific countries including 10 ASEAN member states and their five trading partners, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, has further boosted cooperation, and negotiations for an upgraded version of China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA 3.0) are progressing rapidly.

The CAFTA came into effect on Jan 1, 2010, leading to the liberalization and facilitation of trade among the 11 countries.

Currently, China and the 10-member ASEAN are actively pushing forward the version 3.0 CAFTA negotiations, which were officially launched in Nov 2022, to provide new opportunities for trade and investment cooperation between both sides.

The ninth round of negotiations just concluded in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, earlier this month.

"Regional trade and investment liberalization and facilitation have been further promoted. Bilateral trade between China and ASEAN countries, such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore has all surpassed 100 billion U.S. dollars," noted Li Fei, Vice Minister of Commerce, at the press conference.

The officials also disclosed that the 21st China-ASEAN Expo will be held in Nanning, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region from Sept 24 to 28. The 21st China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit will also be held in Nanning during the period.

Guangxi, China's only province-level region that shares both land and sea borders with ASEAN, has seen its trade with the association steadily expand in recent years.

In 2023, trade between Guangxi and ASEAN reached 339.44 billion yuan (about 47.68 billion U.S. dollars), hitting a new record high. In the first seven months of 2024, Guangxi's total imports and exports reached 401.33 billion yuan (about 56.37 billion U.S. dollars), with trade with ASEAN alone standing at 214.93 billion yuan (about 30.19 billion U.S. dollars), a 24.3 percent year-on-year increase.

"Guangxi has positioned itself as a crucial strategic hinterland for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), building cross-border industrial and supply chains with ASEAN countries in sectors like automobile manufacturing, textiles and papermaking, with trade in these areas growing rapidly," said Tan Pichuang, vice chairman of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, referring to the GBA, which is a megalopolis comprising the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao as well as nine cities in the neighboring Guangdong Province.

According to the ministry, looking ahead, China plans to focus on areas such as new energy vehicles (NEVs), lithium batteries and photovoltaic technology and explore new high-tech and large-scale projects with strong industrial impact to further expand cooperation with ASEAN countries.

Bilateral trade between China, ASEAN continues to strengthen: authorities

It's impossible to build a system of governance that ensures artificial intelligence (AI) systems always operate and police themselves in alignment with both human and machine well-being without the participation of China, American columnist Thomas L. Friedman said in an article on Tuesday.

Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the author of "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century," attended the China Development Forum 2025 held on March 23 and 24 in Beijing.

Based on what he saw and heard during the event, Friedman published an article in the New York Times titled "What I'm Hearing in China This Week About Our Shared Future" on Tuesday.

"There is an earthshaking event coming — the birth of artificial general intelligence (AGI). The United States and China are the two superpowers closing in on AGI — systems that will be as smart or smarter than the smartest human and able to learn and act on their own," the article reads.

Friedman cited an M.I.T. Technology Review report on the "16 humanoid robots" that danced on stage during China's televised Spring Festival gala this year which read: "Clad in vibrant floral print jackets, they took part in a signature ... dance, twirling red handkerchiefs in unison with human dancers."

Friedman wrote in his column that "In their day job, these robots work assembling electric vehicles. Dancing was just their hobby."

"The advances that China has made on AI in just the past year have made it absolutely clear that Beijing and Washington are now the world's two AI superpowers," Friedman wrote.

He mentioned a recent report by Morgan Stanley describing China's dominance over the West in the humanoid robot industry, saying the country is home to a majority of the top-listed companies in this sector.

Noting AI systems and humanoid robots offer so much potential benefit to humanity, Friedman warned they could also be hugely destructive and destabilizing if not embedded with the right values and controls.

He repeatedly stressed the importance of collaboration between the U.S. and China in AI.

"Because what Soviet-American nuclear arms control was to world stability since the 1970s, U.S.-Chinese AI collaboration to make sure we effectively control these rapidly advancing AI systems will be for the stability of tomorrow's world," Friedman wrote.

"China has greatly narrowed the gap with us and surpassed the other democracies. This can't be done without Beijing. So guess who's coming to dinner. It's a table for two now," he said.

Friedman wrote in the article that "Once AGI arrives, if we are not assured that these systems will be embedded with common trust standards, the United States and China will not be able to do anything together."

He pointed out that in this case, neither side will trust anything they trade with the other, because AI will be in everything that is digital and connected, including cars, watches, toasters, chairs, implants, and notepads.

"So if there is no trust between the U.S. and China and each of the two countries has their own AI systems, it will be the TikTok problem on steroids. A lot of trade will just grind to a halt, with only soybeans for soy sauce sold to each other," Friedman wrote, saying "It will be a world of high-tech feudalism."

Friedman said he was taken with a speech by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari during the conference, who said that "We should build more trust between humans before we develop truly superintelligent AI agents. But we are now doing exactly the opposite. All over the world, trust between humans is collapsing. Too many countries think that to be strong is to trust no one and be completely separated from others. If we forget our shared human legacies and lose trust with everyone outside us, that will leave us easy prey for an out-of-control AI."

Global AI governance cannot happen without China: American columnist