A milestone for partnership with ASEAN

The establishment of the China-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) in 2021 was a well-deserved outcome of China's partnership diplomacy with its Southeast Asian neighbors.

While the naysayers try to portray the enduring China-ASEAN dialogue relations as a tool for Beijing to establish an exclusionary and hierarchical regional order centered on the gravity of China's economic might, the regional bloc continues to benefit from the inclusive and symbiotic Belt and Road Initiative through connectivity-based collaboration. The largely economy-driven Belt and Road cooperation has presented to the region and the world a stable, resilient and egalitarian model of cooperation.

China, the first dialogue partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has been the biggest trading partner of the bloc for the past 13 years, while ASEAN surpassed the European Union as the largest trading partner of China amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.