Australia is willing to deepen and expand economic relationship with China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as the country's prosperity is more connected than ever to developments in the region, said a senior Australian diplomat.
"Australia has a significant economic relationship with China and the ASEAN region, and one we wish to deepen and expand further," said Simon Merrifield, Australian Ambassador to the ASEAN, in an interview before the China-ASEAN Expo, which opened on Tuesday in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
Australia has been invited to the expo as a special guest country. The Australian pavilion will showcase its trade, investment, education and tourism capabilities during the event.
The country's inaugural participation shows its support to the unique, multilateral economic and business cooperation platform, said Merrifield who will represent the country to participate in strategic government-to-government dialogues with leaders from China and across the ASEAN region.
Merrifield said that Australia is keen to work with China to ensure that RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) will be a credible and commercially meaningful agreement that will underpin ongoing economic growth over the years ahead.
The RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between ASEAN member states and the six countries with which ASEAN has existing FTAs (Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand).Â
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Australia is willing to deepen and expand economic relationship with China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as the country's prosperity is more connected than ever to developments in the region, said a senior Australian diplomat.
