By ZHONG NAN in Beijing and ZHANG LI in Nanning | China Daily | Updated: 2022-04-25 09:08
Benjamas Tanvetyanont (right), Consul-General of Thailand in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, promotes products via live streaming in Nanning on March 28. [Photo/China Daily]
Nearly four months after the regional comprehensive economic partnership went into effect, foreign diplomats based in China said the forms of intra-regional trade will be further diversified and facilitated, enriching the economic vitality of the Asia-Pacific region through an inclusive and sustained economic recovery amid the pandemic.
As the RCEP is a trade agreement between the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia and New Zealand, the pact will strengthen regional trade and investment and businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, help smaller-scale businesses gain better access to traditional and new foreign trade formats, including cross-border e-commerce and international trade, and increase global gross domestic product in a sizable market comprising a third of the world’s population.
In a bid to ship more products to China in the coming years, the consuls-general of Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia in Nanning in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in late March attended a live-streamed event to share trade-related innovations and business ties between China and China China to promote ASEAN.
These diplomats promoted products such as Vietnamese coffee, Thai latex pillows and Malaysian Musang King Durian to local consumers and interacted with audiences online by partnering with a TikTok live streamer.
The three consuls-general also recommended Guangxi specialties such as jasmine tea, tangerines, edible bird’s nests, medical supplies and Luosifen rice noodles to Southeast Asian countries through Lazada, a cross-border e-commerce platform.
“Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, more Thai consumers have found pleasure in online shopping. This event will further strengthen trade ties between Thailand and Guangxi and support RCEP’s significant growth,” said Benjamas Tanvetyanont, Thailand’s consul-general in Nanning.
According to Peng Jian, the organizer of the event and director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nanning Municipality, the event was designed for diplomats to witness the development of Nanning’s cross-border business and promote mutual prosperity through the implementation of the RCEP.
“Given the pandemic situation, there is no better time for us to dive into the e-commerce sector, where we can shop and also take a look at the world around us and understand how other people are living their lives through the products they are using “said Azlimi Zakaria, Consul General of Malaysia in Nanning.
He said the cross-border e-commerce cooperation between Malaysia and China, especially in Guangxi, will be further expanded as both sides take the growth of this sector quite seriously.
Assisted by Malaysia’s favorable natural conditions, the official added that the China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park – the flagship project of investment cooperation between the two countries – has already established a trade base for processing edible bird’s nests in Guangxi.
There are currently three pre-processing centers in Malaysia, which have been registered overseas by China Customs Administration. The edible bird nest trading base in the park is operated by 15 bird nest production and processing enterprises, and 11 of them have been approved by the Chinese government for the deep processing qualification.
Do Nam Trung, Vietnamese Consul-General in Nanning, said he wants to promote mutual understanding by introducing Chinese consumers to Vietnamese coffee culture.
As a new form of foreign trade, cross-border e-commerce has become an important engine for stabilizing China’s imports and exports, and has experienced rapid growth despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It rose from less than 1.2 trillion yuan (187.05 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018 to 1.98 trillion yuan in 2021, according to the General Administration of Customs.
With the launch of China (Nanning) Comprehensive Cross-Border E-Commerce Pilot Zone in 2018, the park has so far attracted more than 100 companies to set up business within the zone. According to the Guangxi government, they reported a transaction volume of 7.77 billion yuan in 2021, up 259 percent year-on-year.
Zhang Jianping, director-general of the Beijing-based China Center for Regional Economic Cooperation, said closer ties between RCEP signatory countries would not only have far-reaching implications for regional trade, investment and market integration, but also for global economic recovery.
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