Li expects deal on South China Sea in 3 years
Print Edition
CHINA hopes its talks with Southeast Asian nations on a code of conduct in the South China Sea will bear fruit in three years, visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said in Singapore yesterday.
China hopes to complete talks on the COC in the South China Sea within three years, clinching a deal that will keep enduring peace in the region, Li said in a speech at the 44th Singapore Lecture.
Joint efforts by China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have stabilized the South China Sea. Both sides should seize the opportunity to push for substantial progress on COC talks, Li said.
The COC talks, launched by China and ASEAN countries, are a mechanism of equal participants, independent of external interference, he added.
Li also highlighted the significance of the recent adoption of a single draft negotiating text of the COC.
“The single draft negotiating text is not merely a technical term, but an indication that China and ASEAN have reached consensus on ensuring peace and stability, freedom of overflight and navigation in the South China Sea,” he said.
Reaching agreement on the COC will not only be beneficial to China and ASEAN countries but also conducive to free trade, which is in the interest of all sides, he said.
Li is on his first official visit to Singapore by a Chinese premier in 11 years. During the Monday-Friday trip, he will also attend the 21st leaders’ meeting between China and the ASEAN (10+1) and the 21st ASEAN-China, Japan and South Korea leaders’ meeting (10+3) and the 13th East Asia Summit.
Li also said China expects to finalize negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in 2019.
“We are going to announce the completion of the substantial negotiations on RCEP and the entry into the final stage at this meeting, and China hopes to conclude the RCEP negotiations next year,” he said.
China, ASEAN and other parties have spent six years negotiating an economic integration agreement, which covers about half of the world’s population, he said.
RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 ASEAN members and six Asia-Pacific states with which ASEAN has free trade agreements — Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
Li called for global efforts to uphold free trade and multilateralism to realize world peace and global common prosperity. He said it is the international order based on multilateralism and free trade that has helped humanity maintain lasting peace and reduce poverty since the end of World War II more than 70 years ago.
Stressing that China has always advocated just and fair trade, Li said free trade is the prerequisite of all trade. “Without free trade, it means no trade, then how can there be just and fair trade? Meanwhile, just and fair trade is an important basis for the continued development of free trade.”
He also said China remains a developing country by any standard, and the Chinese people obtained their due wealth by hard work.
Though China is the second-largest economy in the world, its per capita GDP only accounts for about 80 percent of the world’s average, Li noted, stressing that such a case has never occurred before anywhere in the world.
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