China and ASEAN unveiled a landmark upgrade to their free trade framework on Wednesday, launching the institutional and rule-based Version 3.0 China-ASEAN Free Trade Area in south China's Nanning to deepen cooperation in digital economy, green development, and supply chain connectivity.
It features a Version 3.0 China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA), a high-quality upgrade that is institutional, rule-based, and geared toward emerging sectors.
Unlike the earlier iterations that prioritized tariff reductions and service investment, Version 3.0 expands the scope to include the digital economy, green development, supply chain connectivity, and harmonization of standards and conformity assessment procedures, marking a strategic pivot toward future-oriented cooperation.
"The Version 3.0 CAFTA creates a great number of opportunities. Firstly, it highlights greater openness, mainly in areas like digital economy, green economy, and service trade. Secondly, the standards are more compatible, which will help facilitate trade, investment, and commodity inspection between China and ASCEAN countries," said Chai Haitao, invited vice president of China Council for International Investment Promotion.
The vision also spotlights AI as an emerging force in empowering regional economic and trade cooperation. Efforts should be made to accelerate the adoption of AI in industrial production, particularly in fields such as cross-border e-commerce, smart agriculture, and green energy, it said.
"AI plays a very important role for the business and the factories. The new entrepreneurs, they can lower costs [and] use AI to [penetrate] the market. So, this is very important in terms of the service, globally," said Phanphasa Lomchanthala, associate professor at the school of economics and business administration of the National University of Laos.
China and ASEAN have been each other's largest trading partners for five consecutive years, with ASEAN maintaining its position as China's largest trading partner in agricultural products for eight consecutive years, data from the General Administration of Customs (GAC) showed on Tuesday.
In the first eight months of 2025, China's imports and exports with ASEAN rose 9.7 percent year on year to 4.93 trillion yuan (about 694 billion U.S. dollars), hitting a historic high for the period, according to GAC.
China, ASEAN upgrade free trade pact as bilateral trade hits historic high
