Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng who led the delegation to attend the series of East Asian trade and economic ministers’ meeting in the capital of Malaysia Kuala Lumpur attended the 18th ASEAN-China, Japan and South Korea trade and economic ministers’ meeting on the afternoon of August 23.

Gao pointed out that the 10+3 countries are still the significant economies not only in Asia but also in the whole world, and play an increasingly important role in the development and prosperity of Asia. China attaches great importance to its cooperation with Asia especially with the East Asian regions and is willing to strengthen its cooperation with relevant countries to jointly cope with the deep adjustment of the world economy and the challenges with remarkably rising risks. He said that China will actively participate in promoting the economic cooperation of the East Asian regions and push the sound and health development of the region and the world according to the important concept of creating “a common destiny of Asia” proposed by President Xi Jinping and the view of the prosperity of the East Asia marking the well-being of the people emphasized by Premier Li Keqiang in the 10+3 leaders’ meeting last year.

Gao Hucheng proposed three opinions in terms of strengthening the trade and economic cooperation with 10+3 countries. Firstly, China is willing to jointly improve the trade facilitation level with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea. Chinese government has already decided to accept the protocol of the Trade Facilitation Agreement of the WTO, hoping that countries which haven’t yet accepted this protocol can accelerate promoting the domestic procedure and speed up its acceptance of the protocol as soon as possible to enable the Trade Facilitation Agreement to bring the benefits earlier so that it could serve as an important achievement of the 10th ministerial meeting by the end of this year. Secondly, China is willing to strengthen the free trade area construction with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea, to promote the circulation of commodities, service and funds within the region to be freer, and to focus on jointly promoting all countries related with the China-Korea FTA to complete the domestic approval procedure for the early entry into force of the agreement. China is also willing to push forward the negotiations of China-Japan-Korea FTA to make progress, contribute to the development of the RCEP negotiations and strive to complete the upgrading negotiations of the China-ASEAN FTA by the end of this year. Thirdly, China is willing to promote the cooperation of the East Asian industrial chain and value chain with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea, to enhance the cooperation of the capacity and the equipment manufacturing, to jointly intensify the construction of the 21th Maritime Silk Road, to give a full play to everyone’s advantage and to create a complementary and win-win intra-area industrial chain and value chain with efficient cooperation.

The head of the trade and economic department of 10 ASEAN countries, Secretary of the ASEAN and Minister of MOTIE Yoon Sang Jick and the Minister of Economic Industry of Japan attended the meeting and actively responded to the Chinese opinions. The Vice-Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen accompanied to participate in the meeting.