Working to Build a Community with a Shared Future between China and Its Neighbours in the Post-Pandemic Era
COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented impact on China’s economic and social development, and has also put the economic development in Asia Pacific region as well as in the world at large in front of the challenges which have never been seen before. Today’s China and the rest of the world have witnessed fundamental changes in their relationship. Faced with increasing external instability and uncertainty, it is one of China’s most important tasks in its foreign affairs to maintain clear strategic focus and find ways to turn crises into opportunities. countries at the first place in its foreign affair layout. Since its 18th National Congress, the CPC’s Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core has actively managed the overall diplomatic situation and raised its peripheral diplomacy to a high level of understanding of whether China will successfully realize its two centenary goals as well as the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. In view of China’s increasingly close economic and trade links and interactions with its neighbouring countries, General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward that China’s neighbourhood diplomatic strategy and work must keep pace with the times, be more enthusiastic and make greater efforts to fully demonstrate the concepts of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, so that China’s development can benefit more neighboring countries and achieve common development. “We should ensure success in conducting neighbourhood diplomacy to foster a more favorable and friendly neighbourhood environment.” Under the guidance of the above diplomatic concept, China has made remarkable achievements in the establishment of multilateral cooperation mechanism and the planning and implementation of specific projects through a series of major diplomatic activities, greatly improving the environment for regional cooperation.
The 10+3 cooperation mechanism (hereinafter referred to as “10+3”) emerged when ASEAN together with China, Japan and ROK jointly responded to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and has continued to grow in responses to various emergencies. It is now the most important platform for
regional cooperation in Asia Pacific, with 21 ministerial meetings and more than 70 dialogue mechanisms, such as China-ASEAN 10+1, Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) and China-ASEAN Expo, to name some. All these multilateral mechanisms and cooperation platforms have played an important role in promoting regional economic development and prosperity.
Every country’s development has to depend on its good cooperative relationship with other countries, especially its neighbours. With the rapid development of China’s economy and the shift of the world economic focus to the Asia Pacific region as well as the continuous improving development of the neighbouring countries, the economic interdependence between China and its neighbours has been deepened and political mutual trust enhanced. China’s relations with its neighbouring countries have withstood the severe tests with the sudden onslaught of COVID-19. In particular, the achievements made in fighting against the COVID-19 through solidarity and cooperation with other 10+3 countries has proved the correctness and foresight of China’s neighbourhood diplomatic concept.
Strengthening 10+3 Cooperation Is Key to Turning
Crisis into Opportunity
At present, 10+3 countries have achieved positive results in COVID-19 prevention and control, yet it has still taken a heavy toll on countries around the world, which are suffering a serious impact on their economic development. COVID-19 has dealt a heavy blow to the economies of ASEAN countries, and the prosperity of the economies in the region has declined dramatically. It has also brought an unprecedented impact on the economic and social development in China, Japan and ROK. Since the outbreak in Europe and the United States began in March, it is expected that the impact of overseas outbreaks on China’s import and export will further increase after the second quarter. Japan’s economy shrank seriously in the first quarter of the year and further declined in the second quarter.
At a time when international economic and trade exchanges are generally depressed by COVID-19, two sets of data are very striking. First, in the first quarter of 2020, China’s import and export to ASEAN totaled 991.34 billion yuan, registering a year-on-year increase of 6.1%, accounting for 15.1%
of China’s total foreign trade. Second, in April 2020, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia’s total imports from China increased by about 50% year on year, while Japan and ROK’s total imports from China increased by 20% year on year. Meanwhile, China’s imports from other countries in Asia also increased significantly. By analyzing these two sets of data we can see that with a significant increase of external instabilities and uncertainties, taking the fighting against COVID-19 as an opportunity to strengthen East Asia regional cooperation with 10+3 as the major component as well as hedging the decreased trade in other regions with the increased one in ASEAN, Japan and ROK may become an effective way for China to turn the crisis into an opportunity in the postepidemic era.
The GDP of China and ASEAN together totals US$16.60 trillion, and their bilateral trade accounts for 13% of the world total. In 2019, the trade volume between China and ASEAN reached US$641.5 billion, an increase of 9.2%, higher than the average growth rate of China’s foreign trade, and the twoway investment reached US$200 billion. The total foreign trade volume of China, Japan and ROK are nearly US$7 trillion, accounting for about 20% of the global trade volume. The trade volume among China, Japan and ROK increased from US$130 billion in 1999 to more than US$720 billion in 2018, and the proportion of their economic gross in the world increased from 17% to 24%. In terms of the relations between ASEAN and China, Japan and ROK, the total trade volume between ASEAN and the three countries in 2018 increased by 6.8% to US$869.1 billion, accounting for 31% of the total ASEAN commodity trade volume. The direct investment made by the three countries in ASEAN is US$37.9 billion, accounting for 24.5% of the total foreign direct investment in ASEAN in 2018, an increase of 9.9% compared with 2017. ASEAN together with China, Japan and ROK has a huge economic aggregate, deep integration of industrial chain and supply chain, and close trade exchanges. The total trade volume of 10+3 countries has exceeded US$10 trillion, nearly half of which is made within the region. If 10+3 can further strengthen the docking of macroeconomic policies, stabilize, fix and create industrial chain and supply chain, and jointly promote the recovery of production and trade in the region, it will help countries to tide over difficulties and pull the regional economy back to the track of recovery.
The importance of 10+3 is also reflected in the fact that as the most important cooperation platform in East Asia, it is expected to expand into the most important cooperation mechanism in the Asia Pacific Region, known as Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). If an agreement can be successfully reached, RCEP, the world’s largest free trade zone, will cover 44% of the world population and 40% of the global trade volume, and the total GDP in the zone will reach US$ 27 trillion. It will not only facilitate the rapid economic development in the region so as to help with the acceleration of countries in realizing their economic reform goals in the unpredictable global economic environment, but also promote the shift of world economic focus to the Asia Pacific region.
Maturing Conditions for Strengthening 10+3 Cooperation in Post-Epidemic Era
As a key external factor of regional cooperation, the United States has been butting in the 10+3 cooperation, which is an important reason why the cooperation has failed in making great progress for many years. The U.S. is worried about being excluded from the new world center of economic growth. It does not want to see China benefit from regional cooperation. Neither does it want to see unity and cooperation achieved by 10+3, since it believes that a split East Asia is in its own interests. For that reason, the U.S. has successively implemented the so-called “Asia Pacific rebalancing strategy” and “Indo-Pacific strategy”, which seriously interfered with the smooth development of 10+3 cooperation. In addition, the 10+3 countries have a high degree of dependence on external markets such as Europe and the U.S., and the countries in the region have great differences in the level of economic development, political and social systems, and there are even territorial and sovereignty disputes between some countries, which also have a negative impact on regional cooperation. However, while bringing challenges to the 10+3 countries, COVID-19 has also provided favorable conditions to eliminate the above negative factors to some extent.
First, the epidemic strengthened the basic characteristics of geo-economy. In the past decades, with the strong impetus of globalization, almost every country’s industrial chain has been embedded in the global one. In the postepidemic era, people will find a shorter distance between the production base and the consumer market conducive to avoiding unexpected risks, lowering logistics cost and vulnerability of the industrial and supply chains. Based on this consideration, countries will start to build an industrial chain that is more independent, complete and safe, which will result in the reorganization of global supply and industrial chains with localization and regionalization as their main direction.
Second, the 10+3 cooperation mechanism has a complete industry chain and division of labor system with complementary advantages. It is almost the only choice to strengthen regional cooperation in case of high possibility of changing external conditions. Japan and ROK both with small territory are in lack of domestic development power, so foreign trade plays an important role in their economic development. The rise of geo-economic thinking in Europe and the United States will push Japan and ROK to readjust the direction of foreign cooperation, that is, to pay more attention to their neighbours in Asia. During this period of preventing and controlling COVID-19, China’s strong organization and mobilization ability as well as sense of responsibility as a ma
jor country in promoting international cooperation have exerted a positive impact on Japan, ROK and other countries in the region. That has also enhanced the willingness of regional countries to strengthen cooperation with China in the post-epidemic era, which is conducive to pushing the 10+3 cooperation into the fast lane.
Third, East Asian countries belong to the same cultural circle along the history, which is one of the favorable factors for regional cooperation. Due to geographical proximity and cultural similarity, East Asia has formed a distinctive cultural system. Although the East Asian cultural circle tends to decline as a result of the strong impact of western culture since the modern times, it has been revived with the rise of East Asian economy since the 1980s. In the post-epidemic era, East Asian identity and values resurfaced, providing important cultural support and spiritual ties for the 10+3 cooperation.
In October 2019, the protocol on upgrading the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area came into full force for all members of the agreement, which lowered the threshold in terms of rules of origin, trade clearance provisions, service trade, investment fields, etc., further released the bonus of the implementation of the free trade area, and effectively promoted the development of agricultural trade between China and ASEAN. In the first quarter of 2020, China’s export of agricultural products to ASEAN totaled 28.45 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.4%, which boosted the overall export of ASEAN by 0.4 percentage points. Thanks to the joint efforts by China and ASEAN for larger benefits, the total import and export volume of the integrated circuits between both sides in the first quarter of 2020 increased significantly, driving the overall growth of foreign trade by 3.3%. During COVID-19 outbreak, the Belt and Road projects including China-Laos railway, Indonesia’s Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Railway, China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines, Cambodia’s Phnom PenhWest Port expressway, which has added confidence and vitality to the economic development in the region.
In the process of fighting against COVID-19, China and Southeast Asian countries have worked closely in the field of cross-border e-commerce, providing strong support to Southeast Asian economy in quick recovering from the impact of COVID-19. Based on a high degree of political mutual trust, the preferential policies provided by ASEAN countries for China’s cross
border e-commerce have lowered the threshold of market access for imported goods, exempted the pre-approval procedures including registration, filing and license prior to the import of many commodities, which greatly saved the time for Chinese goods to enter the ASEAN market.
Building a Community of Shared Future in the Neighbourhood to Deal with the Profound Changes Unseen in a Century
The world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century. For the question of “what kind of world shall we build and how to build it”, the answer given by General Secretary Xi Jinping is to work toward the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, and he advocates starting from the neighbourhood. During his visit to Indonesia in October 2013, Xi made two proposals of working together with the ASEAN states in building the Maritime Silk Road in the 21st Century and building the China-ASEAN community with a shared future. Xi expounded China’s policy of good neighborliness to ASEAN, and put forward “to build a closer China-ASEAN community with a shared future for bringing more benefits to both sides and to the people of the region”. With joint efforts made by China and ASEAN in the past seven years, the vision is becoming a reality. Nowadays, China has successfully started the building of the communities of common destiny with three Southeast Asian countries, namely Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
The practice of 10+3 close cooperation in fighting against COVID-19 and strengthening economic cooperation shows that building a community with a shared future in the neighborhood can provide a strong spiritual impetus for regional countries to overcome the epidemic and provide a reliable guarantee for them to be the first ones to defeat the crisis in the post-epidemic era. After the outbreak of COVID-19, China received strong support from Japan and
ROK in terms of political solidarity and protective materials during the most arduous stage of fighting the virus. On March 20th, a special video conference on COVID-19 was held among the foreign ministers of China, Japan and ROK. The three countries respectively shared their experiences in fighting against COVID-19, strengthened policy communication, and reached consensus on further enhancing cooperation on public health and safety as well as economic production recovery. ASEAN member states and the Secretariat have also expressed their support and condolences to China, and all sectors of the ASEAN community have provided enthusiastic support to China through various channels. After COVID-19 was brought under effective control in China while it started to spread in Japan, ROK and ASEAN countries, China has provided support and help to the above-mentioned countries by donating materials and sending medical expert groups. In the face of COVID-19, the 10+3 countries have shown mutual trust and render mutual assistance. The unity and cooperation among these countries have set a good model for the international community to defeat COVID-19.
Working together to deal with the crisis has always been an important driving force for regional cooperation in East Asia. 10+3 countries not only solved the two financial crises together, but also showed excellent coordination and cooperation ability in the process of dealing with non-conventional security issues such as the Indian Ocean tsunami, SARS and influenza A (H1N1). In the face of the unprecedented challenges brought about by COVID-19, the 10+3 successfully convened a special summit on combating coronavirus on April 14th, and issued a signal of “East Asian countries standing shoulder by shoulder in difficulties and looking after each other”, which reflects the determination of East Asian countries to overcome the difficulties hand in hand. The participating countries reached a consensus on maintaining necessary contact and communication during the anti-epidemic period, ensuring openness and transparency of information, agreeing to form the principles that all countries in the region must implement and abide by, and reaching a written agreement on the unified allocation of human and material resources for countries in need. In terms of unified use of preparatory funds, the special meeting issued a statement claiming that a certain amount shall be allocated from the existing China-ASEAN (10+1) cooperation fund and the 10+3 cooperation fund, including additional financial support provided by ASEAN external partners, to establish a special fund for tackling public health emergencies. All parties unanimously agreed on taking cooperation against COVID-19 as a breakthrough for working together in reducing the impact of the epidemic on the economy and society, maintaining necessary economic and trade cooperation and personnel exchanges, trade and investment exchanges and appropriate opening, keeping the supply chain open, formulating the postepidemic economic recovery plan, and taking positive measures including fiscal stimulus policies.
As the world’s first regional multilateral collective action in combating COVID-19 and pursuing economic recovery, this special meeting serves as an important symbol of “10+3” transforming from functional cooperation in economic field to institutional cooperation in a broader field as well as a milestone in the historical process of building a community with a shared future in the neighborhood. The 10+3 mechanism has displayed strong ability in efficient mobilization, organization and coordination, fully demonstrating that in the post-epidemic era, countries in the region should, by continuously adhering to the concept of building a community with a shared future in the neighborhood, foster a tough fortress to resist the impact of “anti-globalization”, strive to take initiative in world political and economic development process full of uncertainties, and remain invincible amid profound changes unseen in a century.