BALI, Indonesia -
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said.
The deals were signed yesterday on the closing day of an ASEAN summit that also included South Korea. The summit was held on Indonesia's resort island of Bali to show that the region would not be paralyzed by last year's bloody bombings.
China and India have been siphoning off an increasing share of foreign investment and trade in Asia in recent years, and many ASEAN members are concerned their larger Asian neighbors will economically overpower Southeast Asia, where many of its 500 million people live in poverty.
The 10 Southeast Asian leaders on Tuesday launched an ambitious attempt to pull their diverse governments - Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda said he hoped that South Korea, Japan and Russia would soon sign the treaty as well.
Beijing and ASEAN already are committed to establishing by 2010 a free-trade area that would combine their huge markets. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said China should be seen as an opportunity rather than an economic threat.
China cannot develop without the support of the rest of East Asia and the prosperity of East Asia also needs China
Jiabao said.
ASEAN-China trade amounted to $55 billion in 2001, with trade growing by an average of 25.7 percent annually between 1993 and 2001, according to the latest ASEAN statistics.
In her closing remarks yesterday, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, ASEAN chairwoman, said the group pledged to work together to achieve $100 billion in ASEAN-China trade by 2005.
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi signed a wide-ranging trade deal with ASEAN. His country traditionally has been Southeast Asia's largest trading partner and investor, with two-way trade amounting to $99 billion in 2001 or 14.4 percent of ASEAN's total trade. However, in contrast to China, Japan has seen its ASEAN trade drop from a peak of $121 billion in 1995.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee signed his country's first agreements with ASEAN, acceding to the nonaggression treaty and adopting a pact to cooperate in fighting regional terrorism. India's annual trade with the regional grouping has tripled from about $3 billion to $10 billion in the past decade.
ASEAN leaders on Tuesday signed the Bali Concord II, which envisions an economic community by 2020 in a region whose annual trade currently totals $720 billion but does not create a political union like Western Europe's or a military alliance akin to NATO. It calls for a regional security community to combat terrorism and other transnational crimes.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, Malaysia and Thailand.
17
Archives
Chris Brummitt
20031009358midsize.jpg
Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee, center, applauds as India's Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, left, and Indonesia's Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda shake hands after signing the Accession of the Republic of India to the Treaty of Amity and C
