The China-ASEAN Production Capacity and Investment Cooperation Forum, which has been held for seven consecutive years since 2015, has facilitated the implementation of a large number of key China-ASEAN production capacity cooperation projects and injected new impetus into integrated regional economic development, reported Economic Information Daily Tuesday.

The latest session of the China-ASEAN Production Capacity and Investment Cooperation Forum was held on September 16 in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, aiming to promote win-win cooperation in production capacity and investment between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

This year marks the first year of the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership between China and ASEAN, and is also the first year for the RCEP to come into effect.

Since the beginning of this year, trade between China and ASEAN has maintained a sound momentum of development, with the value registering 627.58 billion U.S. dollars from January to August this year, up 13.3 percent year on year, said Lin Nianxiu, Party member and deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), at the forum.

In terms of production capacity investment and cooperation, China and ASEAN countries have made positive progress in jointly promoting the implementation of the China-ASEAN Joint Statement on Production Capacity Cooperation, setting a successful example of regional cooperation, Lin added.

The China-Laos Railway opened to traffic last year has become an accelerator for regional connectivity, and major cooperation projects like the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway and the China-Thailand railway have been constructed steadily, laying a sound foundation for deepening international cooperation on production capacity and promoting regional integration, noted Lin.

In recent years, by relying on the China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, Guangxi has deepened production capacity cooperation with ASEAN, and accelerated the construction of cross -border industrial chains and supply chains facing ASEAN, introduced Lan Tianli, chairman of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

With these efforts, the two-way investment continues to expand, noted Lan, adding that as of the end of July this year, Guangxi has invested a total of 9.89 billion U.S. dollars in 438 enterprise-level institutions in ASEAN, while ASEAN has set up 575 foreign-funded enterprises in Guangxi with a contracted investment of 6.63 billion U.S. dollars, contributing a lot to deepen China-ASEAN industrial investment cooperation.

At present, many enterprises have begun to explore new opportunities and new drivers in cooperation with ASEAN.

For instance, the ASEAN operations headquarters of Chinese tech firm Inspur, with a total investment of about 2.5 billion yuan, will soon open in Nanning, Guangxi. It will focus on developing cloud services, big data, industrial internet, health care, blockchain, smart city and other business with ASEAN countries.

Source: Belt and Road Portal