The Momentum of ASEAN Free Trade Area Version 3.0: Advancing Cross - Border Supply Chain Connectivity

Author: Yao Weiqun
Source: China Trade News

 

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In recent years, economic and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN countries has achieved fruitful results. Since 2020, ASEAN has become China's largest trading partner in goods. In 2024, the total trade volume between China and ASEAN countries approached 7 trillion yuan, accounting for 15.9% of China's total foreign trade volume. China has remained ASEAN's largest trading partner for 16 consecutive years, and ASEAN has  remained firmly China's largest trading partner for 5 consecutive years. In the first quarter of this year, ASEAN continued to hold the position of China's largest trading partner, with imports and exports accounting for 16.6% of China's overall foreign trade. The full completion of the negotiations on CAFTA Version 3.0 marks that economic and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN has entered a new historical stage.

CAFTA Version 3.0 fully embodies the characteristics of being inclusive, modern, comprehensive, and mutually beneficial. It has added new contents such as the digital economy, the green economy, standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures, customs procedures and trade facilitation, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, competition and consumer protection, small, medium and micro enterprises, and economic and technical cooperation. This is conducive to the two sides promoting wider - ranging and deeper regional economic integration under the new situation and is of important pioneering significance.

Supply chain connectivity has always been a priority area of APEC. In November 2009, the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting clearly stated that it would accelerate the liberalization and facilitation of trade "at the border", improve the business environment "behind the border", and strengthen the "cross - border" supply chain connectivity. From 2010 to 2020, based on the public - private partnership mechanism, APEC member economies successively implemented two action plans, basically eliminating 13 bottlenecks affecting the connectivity of the Asia - Pacific regional supply chain. In 2023, APEC began to implement the third action plan, whose overall goal is to build a safe, resilient, sustainable and open supply chain for enterprises and create a predictable, competitive and digitally connected Asia - Pacific region. The key is to eliminate 5 bottlenecks, including the low digital efficiency of end - to - end supply chains such as border procedures and trade document exchange, the insufficient infrastructure construction supporting a robust multimodal transport connectivity and logistics network, the lack of cooperation in the digital field to establish an effective global supply chain ecosystem, the lack of understanding of green supply chain management practices to build a sustainable supply chain environment, and the lack of targeted support to promote small, medium and micro enterprises to enter and integrate into the global supply chain.

Sponsored by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the China International Supply Chain Promotion Expo is the world's first national - level exhibition with the theme of supply chains and an international public product shared by the world. Enterprises from the 10 ASEAN countries are frequent and important guests of the Expo. Taking advantage of the full completion of the negotiations on CAFTA Version 3.0, the Expo will become a credible cooperation space for promoting the collaborative removal of supply chain connectivity bottlenecks among enterprises from China and the 10 ASEAN countries, provide best practices for cooperation between Chinese and ASEAN enterprises, and provide an important institutional guarantee and basic basis for building a super large market and a resilient supply chain between China and ASEAN, continuously promoting the construction of the China - ASEAN community with a shared future.

(The author is a member of the Expert Committee of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the Executive Dean of the Shanghai Institute for International Trade Center Strategy Research at the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics)