Speaking at the opening ceremony of the fifth round of negotiations taking place in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, on January 31, he said that China aims to further upgrade liberalisation of trade and investment with ASEAN, on the basis of the existing ACFTA and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
He noted that China is also willing to expand practical cooperation with ASEAN in emerging areas such as trade of intermediate goods, digital trade and cross-border e-commerce.
The ongoing round of negotiations is expected to last until February 2 with the participation of nearly 400 officials from relevant agencies of China and ASEAN countries.
The negotiations on the ACFTA were launched in 2000. Version 1.0 of the ACFTA was officially established in 2010, with more than 90% of the tax items of the two sides enjoying zero tariff treatment. The ACFTA was officially upgraded to version 2.0 in 2019. At the ASEAN-China Summit in November 2022, the two sides announced the launch of negotiations to upgrade the ACFTA to version 3.0.
