The leaders’ Meetings on East Asian Cooperation were successfully held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia recently. During the meetings, China and ASEAN fully displayed their mutually shared spirit of openness and cooperation, sending once again a strong message of East Asian cooperation.

Since the establishment of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in November last year, China and ASEAN have focused on the building of a peaceful, safe and secure, prosperous, beautiful and amicable home proposed by President Xi Jinping, deepened strategic cooperation, promoted connectivity, pursued common development and consolidated people-to-people ties. We have not only opened a brand new chapter in China-ASEAN relations, but also played strong leading and driving roles in East Asian cooperation.

During the meetings, China and ASEAN reviewed the important progress achieved in implementing the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, conducted in-depth exchanges on promoting trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, advancing new-type industrialization and agricultural modernization, accelerating digital and green transformation, building a stronger shield for public health security, and enhancing coordination on multilateral governance of development, and put forward many concrete initiatives and measures. The two sides once again demonstrated with actions that openness and cooperation are the right way to deal with the complicated situation, and the common choice of China and ASEAN as well.

To uphold openness and cooperation, we need to forge a stronger consensus on cooperation. The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held not long ago reiterated that China will keep to its foreign policy goals of upholding world peace and promoting common development, remain committed to an independent foreign policy of peace, to peaceful development and to the fundamental national policy of opening-up, and work to grow friendship and cooperation with all countries.

ASEAN is a high priority in China’s neighborhood diplomacy, and also a comprehensive strategic partner sharing the same future with China. Modernization and achieving a better life for our people is a goal we are both working hard to maintain. China looks forward to work with ASEAN to continuously enhance friendship, deepen mutual trust and expand common interests. We need to stay focused on development and cooperation, embrace opportunities, meet challenges, and build a closer China-ASEAN community with a shared future.

To uphold openness and cooperation, we need to focus on common development. Global challenges require global responses. All parties need to put development first, synergize development strategies, and take collective actions to fully unleash the development and cooperation potential of East Asia and provide a solid foundation for addressing post-pandemic recovery, climate change and other challenges as well as achieving sustainable development.

China and ASEAN will continue to promote the implementation of the Global Development Initiative. In pursuing high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, we may promote the mutually beneficial cooperation between the Belt and Road Initiative and the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific. Our cooperation may center on the following lines of efforts, namely trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, new-type industrialization, digitization, low-carbon development, agricultural modernization, etc. We need to further tap the potentials of cooperation, upgrade cooperation mechanisms, raise our collective competitiveness, so as to realize the common development of two billion people in China and ASEAN, and contribute to the peace, stability and prosperity of the region and the world.

To uphold openness and cooperation, we must have firm confidence in cooperation. In the face of complicated and complex international situation and surging risks and challenges, East Asian cooperation has been able to maintain a good momentum of steady development in general, an important reason for which is the formation of a multi-tiered and inter-connected architecture of regional cooperation. And the key to the success of this architecture is that it upholds ASEAN centrality, accommodates the interests of all parties, and conforms to the regional reality. 

We believe that as long as all parties sincerely support ASEAN centrality in East Asian cooperation, uphold the ASEAN Way that maintains mutual respect and dialogue and consultation, support the ASEAN-led cooperation model that features mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation, and support the expanding and strengthening of the ASEAN-led regional architecture that is open and inclusive, East Asian cooperation will be able to stay strong and sustainable. In the current situation, we should still have such confidence.