The 22nd China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit will be held in Nanning, Guangxi from September 17 to 21 and September 17 to 18 respectively. At a press conference held by the State Information Office a few days ago, relevant officials from the Ministry of Commerce and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region introduced the economic and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN and the relevant situation of this year's ASEAN Expo.

Yan Dong, Vice Minister of Commerce, said that in recent years, China has deepened practical cooperation with ASEAN countries in various fields and maintained a good momentum in economic and trade exchanges.

The scale of trade has achieved new growth. China has remained the largest trading partner of ASEAN for 16 consecutive years, and ASEAN has become China's largest trading partner for five consecutive years. In 2024, China's bilateral trade volume with five ASEAN countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore exceeded 100 billion US dollars, of which the bilateral trade volume with Vietnam and Malaysia has exceeded 200 billion US dollars. From January to July this year, China's trade with ASEAN reached US$597 billion, an increase of 8.2% year-on-year, accounting for 16.7% of China's total foreign trade in the same period.

Investment cooperation has achieved new improvements. As of July 2025, China and ASEAN had accumulated more than US$450 billion in two-way investment, and Chinese companies had completed a cumulative project contract amount of US$480 billion in ASEAN. The two sides actively expand cooperation in the fields of digital economy, e-commerce, green development, etc., and cooperation in emerging fields has achieved remarkable results.

Industrial integration achieves new development. Faced with the impact of unilateralism and protectionism on the global production and supply chain, China and ASEAN adhere to multilateral cooperation to jointly maintain the stability and smoothness of regional production and supply chains. The upstream and downstream cooperation between the two sides is closer. A number of parks and interconnection projects are being steadily promoted, and the two sides have further promoted industrial integration and promoted regional economic and social prosperity and development.

New breakthroughs have been achieved in regional economic integration. The negotiations on the 3.0 version of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Zone have been fully completed, and for the first time, a full-chain cooperation framework covering the "hard connectivity" of digital infrastructure and the "soft connectivity" of the rules and standards have been systematically built to achieve rules upgrades. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) is implemented with high quality, and the level of liberalization and facilitation of regional trade and investment has been further improved.

What are the highlights of the 22nd East China International Fair and Summit? According to Lu Xinning, Vice Chairman of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, this year's East China Expo and Summit will focus on economic and trade cooperation and artificial intelligence display, with new features such as high "AI" content, high "commercial" content, high "new" content, and high "gold" content. For example, the "intelligent matching" service can temporarily build a meeting discussion area for merchants with common needs. After merchants enter their needs and conditions in the search box, they can automatically issue negotiation invitations to achieve accurate matching.

"From January to July this year, after approval by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the exhibition organization nationwide organized more than 3,500 enterprises to participate in 99 exhibition projects in ASEAN, with an actual exhibition area of ​​nearly 44,000 square meters." Li Qingshuang, vice president of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that the ASEAN Expo and the Summit invited domestic and foreign companies in the fields of artificial intelligence and digital economy to participate in the conference and negotiations. ASEAN and the National Business Association and enterprises jointly built by the "Belt and Road" will bring projects in smart cities, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture and other fields to China for negotiations; domestic leading artificial intelligence companies will also bring the latest product applications and solutions to participate in the conference, and work with all parties to go to the blue ocean of artificial intelligence and digital economy.

"China and ASEAN have achieved gratifying results in the field of trade and have become a beautiful landscape in global trade development cooperation." Wang Liping, Director of the Asia Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that China will unswervingly promote high-level opening up to the outside world, continue to promote the quality and efficiency of China-ASEAN trade, and reach a new level.