China remains ASEAN's largest trading partner for 16 consecutive years

Yan Dong, Vice Minister of Commerce of China, said on the 8th that China has remained the largest trading partner of ASEAN for 16 consecutive years, and ASEAN has become China's largest trading partner for five consecutive years.

He made the above statement at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office.

In terms of economy and trade, Yan Dong pointed out that in 2024, China's bilateral trade volume with five ASEAN countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore exceeded 100 billion US dollars, of which the bilateral trade volume with Vietnam and Malaysia has exceeded 200 billion US dollars. From January to July 2025, the scale of China's trade with ASEAN reached US$597 billion, an increase of 8.2% year-on-year, accounting for 16.7% of China's total foreign trade in the same period.

In terms of investment cooperation, as of July 2025, China and ASEAN had a cumulative two-way investment of more than US$450 billion, and Chinese companies had a cumulative completion of project contracts in ASEAN of US$480 billion. The two sides actively expand cooperation in the fields of digital economy, e-commerce, green development, etc., and cooperation in emerging fields has achieved remarkable results.

Yan Dong pointed out that the negotiations on the 3.0 version of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Zone have been fully completed, and for the first time, a full-chain cooperation framework covering the "hard connectivity" of digital infrastructure and the "soft connectivity" of the rules and standards have been systematically built to achieve rules upgrades.