Southeast Asia is unfazed by growing competition from China as the world's most populous country prepares to join the WTO, ASEAN chief Rodolfo Severino said yesterday.
The 10-member ASEAN would also benefit from the giant Chinese market opening up, the bloc's secretary general told a news conference at the end of ASEAN meetings involving partner countries such as China.
"ASEAN has supported China's entry into WTO from the beginning. This means that ASEAN must see great benefits from China's entry into WTO, otherwise ASEAN would not have supported it emphatically," Severino said.
China would become subject to international rules once it joins the global trading regime, he said.
China's entry could hurt some ASEAN members' competitiveness, Severino acknowledged, but there were also opportunities to be seized upon.
"ASEAN's view is that this is not a zero sum game," he said, while noting that some Southeast Asian countries may have to make adjustments.
"But on the whole the entry of China into WTO and indeed its growing participation in the international trading system represents not just a competitive challenge... but an opportunity for ASEAN investors to take advantage of for ASEAN products to enter the Chinese market more freely.
"And we could also look to the resulting growth of China's economy as something good for the region in terms of presenting itself as a larger market and as a potential source of investments."
China is fast becoming the darling of foreign investors, taking huge chunks of direct investment going into Asia.
Business leaders and economists have said that for ASEAN to compete, the group must present itself as a unified market of 500 million people rather than as 10 disparate nations.
Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China had already taken steps to expand economic ties with ASEAN, telling the news conference that greater trading links between China and Southeast Asia represented a "win-win situation."
Only one major hurdle remains in China's 15-year march towards WTO membership. A dispute over the ownership of insurance companies still has to be settled after the latest round of talks ended in Geneva last week.
In related news, China and Mexico wrapped up bilateral negotiations on Beijing's entry into the WTO yesterday failing to reach a final agreement, officials said.
"There was no agreement," an official at China's trade ministry said. "The next round of talks will be set following consultations between the two sides," he said.
A delegation of Mexican trade negotiators held talks with China's top WTO negotiator Long Yongtu on Thursday and met with Minister of Trade and Economic Cooperation Shi Guangsheng yesterday, he said.
The Mexican embassy in Beijing refused comment on the talks.
Mexico is the only WTO member not to have reached a bilateral agreement on China's entry into the global trading body.
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