China, ASEAN join hand to build a shared future

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of dialogue relations between China and ASEAN.

Over the past 30 years, China-ASEAN relations enjoy sound and steady development, and pragmatic cooperation in various fields continues to advance.

China and ASEAN countries have stood together and supported each other through hard times.

Amid the prolonged COVID-19 outbreaks and the ensuing social and economic impacts, China has helped the ASEAN countries with their battle against the pandemic.

So far, China has provided ASEAN member states with over 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, a great number of emergency medical supplies and the support of medical teams.

In addition to the provision of vaccines, China has acted as a springboard for countries to speed up trade, investment, transport and tourism.

Meanwhile, trade between the two sides has been facilitated, with the launch of intelligent cross-border logistics platforms like this one in Pingxiang in China's Guangxi.

The platform currently serves China and ASEAN countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia.

According to China's official data, trade between China and ASEAN skyrocketed by 85 times to 684.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 from less than 8 billion U.S. dollars in 1991, making the two sides each other's largest trading partners.

China was also the first non-ASEAN member to complete ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) inked by 15 Asia-Pacific countries, including China and ASEAN's 10 member states in November last year.

Covering a region with a combined GDP of 26.2 trillion U.S. dollars, or about 30 percent of global GDP, RCEP is the world's largest free trade deal.