Assignment on China-Southeast Asian Economic Relations in the 21st Century

This paper introduces the evolving features of China-Southeast Asian economic relations since the beginning of the 21st century from the aspects of bilateral trade, cross-investment, and other forms of economic cooperation, and explores the driving forces of accelerating the economic relations of both sides from the different perspectives of global, regional and country level. It analyzes the problems that exist and predicts the opportunities and challenges brought forth to the Southeast Asian countries by China’s economic adjustment and large-scale industrial restructuring and rejuvenation programme under the context of global economic recession. Keywords: China and Southeast Asia, economic relations, evolving features and challenges. This paper is divided into four sections. Section 1 is the introduction of the whole paper. Section 2 introduces the evolving features of China-Southeast Asian economic relations since the beginning of the 21st century from the aspects of bilateral trade, cross-investment, and other forms of economic cooperation such as trade in service, financial cooperation, tourist cooperation as well as China’s aid and assistance to the new ASEAN member countries. Section 3 explores the driving forces of accelerating the economic relations of both sides from the different perspectives of global, regional and country level. Section 4 further analyzes the problems that exist and predicts the opportunities and challenges brought forth to the Southeast Asian countries by China’s economic adjustment and a large-scale industrial restructuring and rejuvenation programme under the context of global economic recession.

Assignment on Asean-China Economic Relations in the Twenty-First Century

Foreign trade is an important driving force for the economic development of China and ASEAN. In the 1990s, both China and ASEAN achieved high growth rates in foreign trade. During the decade from 1991 to 2000, China’s foreign trade grew at an average annual rate of 15 per cent. In 2000, China’s exports amounted to US $249.2 billion and its imports totaled US $225.1 billion. During the period from 1993 to 2000, ASEAN’s foreign trade grew at an average annual rate of 10.9 per cent, although the rate was lowered during the financial crisis. In 2000, ASEAN-China trade totaled US $39.5 billion growing by an average of 20.4 percent annually since 1991 when overall trade amounted to only US $ 7.9 billion. China’s exports to ASEAN grew from US $ 4.1 billion in 1991 to US $ 17.3 billion in 2000 while its imports from ASEAN grew from US $ 3.8 billion in 1991 to US $ 22.2 in 2000.