On Tuesday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim performed the signing of the trade pact on the sidelines of the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur.
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China’s State Council anticipates that the “3.0 version” of the agreement will expand cooperation in “infrastructure, digital and green transition, trade facilitation, and people-to-people exchanges.” It builds on the region’s first free trade agreement, which was signed in 2010, with China.
Thanks to the China Plus One supply chain that emerged after Trump’s trade war with China in 2018, the 11-member ASEAN and China have recently grown to be each other’s largest trading partners.
In the nine months of 2025, trade between China and ASEAN has already increased by 9.6 percent year over year to reach $785 billion. This trade largely reflects integrated manufacturing supply chains, but it also includes increasingly exported, finished goods from China destined for Southeast Asian consumers.
Li praised China and the bloc’s growing trade relationship and expressed his desire for “expanded and higher-quality economic cooperation” under the improved trade pact at the ASEAN summit on Tuesday.
He claimed that ASEAN governments have encouraged even closer people-to-people exchanges because cooperation in various fields has produced fruitful results, trade volume continues to grow steadily, and trade volume has increased.
The “3.0” trade pact comes at a time when China is attempting to strengthen its relationship with ASEAN, according to Zhiwu Chen, a professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong.
Because China has been experiencing rising trade tensions with the US and the EU, it needs ASEAN nations. He continued, citing the timing as a “win-win outcome for both sides” and the fact that this is a time for ASEAN to take advantage of the window of opportunities in the same way.
In his remarks, Li also criticised Trump’s tariffs, which have stifled global trade, and described them as the US government’s most protectionist policy since the 1930s.
The global economic and trade order has been severely hampered by unilateralism and protectionism. Many nations have unfairly been subjected to high tariffs, Li said, and external forces are interfering more frequently in our region.
The US president also took part in the ASEAN summit on Sunday, and he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea later this week.
Trump ratified framework agreements with Thailand and Vietnam while he was in ASEAN, demonstrating his preference for bilateral trade deals that were struck in one-on-one discussions. He also signed trade agreements with Cambodia and Malaysia.
The agreements, which were set earlier this year at 19 to 20 percent, appeared to be finalizing Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” on the four nations.
Trump’s meeting with Xi is expected to feature tariffs and trade barriers, which comes after US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent announced that the two countries have reached a “framework agreement” on tariffs this week.
Source: Aljazeera
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