China Signs Services Pact with ASEAN
China signed a new trade agreement on services with the Associations of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Sunday. Here’s a disquieting comment from one of those nation’s leaders, which deserves a place in the annals of misbegotten phrasing:
“We are very happy to have China as our big brother in this region,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines said at the opening ceremony of the one-day meeting in Cebu, a central Philippine province.
According to the New York Times’ story on the agreement, two-way trade volume between China and the ASEAN countries last year amounted to more than $160 billion, up 23 percent from 2005. Two-way trade volume between the US and ASEAN nations constituted about $150 billion in 2005. So, the US and China are on roughly equal footing in terms of ASEAN trade volume. But US trade in the region is growing at a slower pace — US-ASEAN trade was up just 9 percent in 2005.
The recently inked US-ASEAN Trade and Investment Framework Agreement is a step forward, but a small one.
April 17, 2007 at 7:26 pm
[...] America’s absence of leadership is China’s gain. For example, just this year, China signed an important new trade agreement on services with the ASEAN [...]