Trade volume between China and ASEAN up 23%

Trade volume between China and ASEAN up 23%

The Jakarta Post, Nanning, Guangxi, China

The China-ASEAN Expo Secretariat invited The Jakarta Post's Harry Bhaskara to attend the second expo and the second China- ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Nanning, Guangxi, from Oct. 19 to Oct. 22. The following is a report on his visit.

While ASEAN and China are busy working on eliminating tariffs on some 4,000 of the approximately 5,000 types of goods and commodities traded between them by 2010, but that particular morning raincoats turned out to be the most coveted commodity.

Organizers of the second China-ASEAN Expo made a last ditch effort to hold the outdoor opening ceremony on time but the rain forced them to delay it for two hours. After the rain stopped, the participants streamed to the 3,000-odd seats and each of them found a plastic raincoat on their seats, just in case the rain would start again.

At 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 19, the ceremony was kicked off by Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong. What a feat, more than 3,000 raincoats readied in two hours.

"We had prepared ourselves for unexpected eventualities, including the worst-case scenario, that is, if the rain persisted," a beaming Li Jinzao, deputy chairman of the organizing committee, told journalists over the weekend.

Clearly, the pressure of hosting the four-day expo with nearly 2,000 exhibitors in 3,293 booths on a six-hectare site, was now off. "We were ready to send out 10,000 umbrellas if need be at the time," says Li, who is also the deputy governor of the autonomous region of Guanxi.

Nanning residents say the city had not seen any rain for the past one month before the event.

The opening ceremony was held at the permanent site of the expo. The elegant high-rise white flower building featured prominently in the background. But the brief opening ceremony understated the scale of the expo.

The volume of trade between China and the ASEAN countries stood at US$105.9 billion in 2004, an increase of 38.9 percent over 2003, according to official statistics. In the first nine months of this year, the trade volume reached $94.54 billion, 25.3 percent up from same period last year. The ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations is China's fourth largest trading partner.

China is determined to set up a free trade area with ASEAN by 2010, with trade expected to be a whopping $200 billion by that time -- a target set by Chinese President Hu Jintao during his visit to the ASEAN countries in April.

The question is whether or not this optimistic target is attainable.

In his opening remarks, ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong, said that the free trade zone ASEAN and China were seeking to create represented a market of 1.85 billion consumers and a combined GDP of almost $2.5 trillion.

The FTA is expected to enable ASEAN's exports to China to grow by 48 percent and China's exports to ASEAN to grow by 55 percent. This would contribute 0.9 percent and 0.3 percent of the GDP of ASEAN and China respectively.

On Oct. 18, the China-ASEAN Business Council signed a declaration at the fourth CABC meeting to facilitate closer and stronger partnerships between enterprises in the region. Commerce and industry chambers from China and each of the ASEAN countries will arrange for domestic business chambers, entrepreneurs, scholars and specialists to take part in the annual meetings of the CABC.

Topping the list on its agenda this year was the council's resolution to encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the CAEXPO.

The CABC was formed by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the ASEAN Commerce and Industry Chamber in 2001 in Jakarta.

Hours after the opening of the expo, the second China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit (CABIS) was convened separately at the Liyuan hotel in a suburb of Nanning. Both the CAEXPO and CABIS were jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of China, its ASEAN counterparts and the ASEAN Secretariat.

At CABIS, government and business leaders discussed the opportunities and challenges facing their respective countries.

Whether or not China and the ASEAN countries will meet the target they have set themselves is open to question. But according to Chinese traditional beliefs, rain is a good omen.