The attendants at the Summit focused on discussing the main topic “Creation and Cooperation – Promoting Regional Economic Growth”, emphasizing on effective solutions to boost cooperation in investment, trade and finance and create new opportunities for commercial activities between ASEAN and China.

Addressing the Summit, PM Dũng highlighted strong developments in the ASEAN-China relations in all fields. He expressed his confidence that the two-way trade turnover between ASEAN and China would reach US $200 billion by 2008. “Our ASEAN-China Free Trade Area will be the world’s biggest FTA in terms of population scale, bringing about significant opportunities for the two sides”, said PM Dũng.

He stated that, as an important bridge linking ASEAN and China, Việt Nam will do its best to contribute to the economic and trade development between ASEAN and China in general as well as between ASEAN and Guangxi and Yunnan in particular.

Earlier, in the same morning, PM Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, Chinese Deputy PM Zeng Peiyan and leaders of ten ASEAN nations officially opened the China-ASEAN Expo.

The Expo, co-organized by ten ASEAN countries and China in Nanning City, Guangxi, is one of the world’s influential fairs. It aims at three aspects: Commercial trade, Investment cooperation and Service trade. This is a new playground to broaden trade cooperation between ASEAN and China.

Việt Nam dispatched 400 businesses to the Expo to survey and seek for chances of cooperation with Chinese and ASEAN partners. Việt Nam is also one of the countries introducing its beautiful city: Hạ Long – the country’s typical tourist city and seaport.

By Xuân Hồng