The 15th China-ASEAN Expo is being held from September 12 to 15 in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Cambodia is this year's country of honor. A total of 29 countries including ASEAN's 10-member countries and more than 2700 enterprises are participating in this year's Expo, marking a new high in attendance. 

This year also marks the 15th Anniversary of China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership, amid the current US-China trade friction; this year's China-ASEAN Expo meeting holds special significance.

In current times, entire world faces serious challenges in preserving the global multilateral trade system. The US, which is world's biggest economy and the only superpower, is provoking trade conflicts with China, some ASEAN countries, EU, Japan, Mexico and Canada, etc.

Major trade pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trans-Pacific trade and Trans-Atlantic trade, are struggling for survival. Even the WTO, an inter-governmental organization that regulates international trade, is posed with challenges of keeping itself relevant in such testing times.

Given this background, it is much more important for China, ASEAN, and other countries/organizations to cooperate more closely to preserve the world multilateral trade system and mitigate the negative influence of Trump Administration's trade protectionism.

In the past 15 years, the China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership has got a lot of achievements. For example, in the trade field, China has been the biggest trade partner for ASEAN for nine consecutive years, and ASEAN has been the third biggest trade partner for China for seven consecutive years.

According to China's official data, from 2003 to 2017, China-ASEAN trade volume increased from 78.26 billion US dollars to 514.82 billion US dollars. In the field of investment, until now, China-ASEAN mutual investment has reached more than 200 billion US dollars, while in 2003, bilateral mutual investment was just a little more than 30 billion US dollars.

China-ASEAN Expo has contributed a lot in boosting bilateral mutual investment and trade, which promotes the development of China-ASEAN FTA and the development of China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership.

China-ASEAN Expo which was first held in 2004, in the past 15 years, has not only been a commodities' fair but it has also successfully held more than 200 forums, with officials, entrepreneurs and experts deliberating on new ways of cooperation in areas of customs, finance, ports, logistics, science and technique, education, culture and tourism.

Since 2004, every year China-ASEAN Expo has jointly opened with the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit. The move has played a great role in promoting the strategic communications among China-ASEAN leaders, coagulating different parties' consensus, and setting up many cooperation mechanisms.

Holistically, China-ASEAN Expo has promoted the development of regional multilateral trade and investment system, which is helpful to regional economic development.

This year's China-ASEAN Expo is closely connected with the landmark Belt and Road Initiative. The event aims to celebrate and further build activities of the China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership. 

The theme of this year's expo is "Jointly building the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the China-ASEAN community of innovation."

This year's event will also witness a series of commemorative activities, especially in the wake of the 15th Anniversary of China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership, China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit. 

The year also marks the China-ASEAN Innovation Year, which will promote bilateral cooperation in innovation.

The China-ASEAN Expo 2018 will be hosting 35 cooperation forums between China and ASEAN countries in the fields of science and technology, international industrial capacity, E-commerce, agriculture, finance, environment protection, business law, etc.

The first forum of the BRI New Economy and the BRI Youth Leaders will also be held during the expo.

In a first, some African countries, along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, have also been invited as cooperation partners. Many participating countries will be installing their booths at the BRI international exhibition area. This year, there's an 80 percent rise in investment and trade promotion activities.

This year's China-ASEAN Expo promotes China-ASEAN cooperation on the building of BRI, bilateral connectivity, people-to-people understanding, and the scope and content of bilateral cooperation.

The China-ASEAN Expo has contributed to bilateral cooperation and the connectivity. In the past 5 years, the BRI building has contributed immensely to the ASEAN countries' internal connectivity and the connectivity between China and ASEAN. 

There are several big connectivity projects currently under construction, such as Sino-Laos railway, Thailand high-speed way, the China-Indochina Peninsula economic corridor, the Sino-Myanmar Economic Corridor, etc. 

Chinese government and enterprises have provided much technology, a large scale of investment, financial assistance or concessional loans to help ASEAN to promote its internal connectivity and its connectivity with China and other regional countries, and China's help has contributed to the ASEAN's integration, its community building, and Asia-Pacific regional cooperation.

But frankly speaking, there are still challenges and obstacles for China-ASEAN's cooperation on the building of BRI, so in the future, both sides should conduct more and more policy consultations about the docking the bilateral development strategies, listen to more views and suggestions from not only governments officials, but also from the entrepreneurs, experts and people, do more and more field studies about the planned cooperation projects, make sure that the cooperation projects benefit people on both the sides, and decrease the damage to local environment .

Then, we can make the cooperation plan more scientific and feasible, to mitigate the challenges and obstacles. More and more successful cooperation under the BRI building will promote China and ASEAN to build the community of shared future.

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