INTRODUCTION

Before the 1990s, there was no official relationship between ASEAN as a grouping and China, although China had official bilateral relations with certain individual ASEAN member states. From the late 1980s, China intensified its efforts to establish diplomatic relations with all the remaining ASEAN states leading eventually to official relationship with the ASEAN grouping.

In his visit to Thailand in November 1988, Chinese Premier Li Peng announced four principles in establishing, restoring and developing relations with all the ASEAN states. After establishing diplomatic relations with Singapore on 3 October 1990, China pushed for official ties with the ASEAN grouping. On 19 July 1991, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen attended the opening session of the Twenty-Fourth ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in Kuala Lumpur as a guest of the Malaysian Government, where he expressed China's interest in cooperating with ASEAN. The latter responded positively. In September 1993, ASEAN Secretary General Dato’ Ajit Singh visited Beijing and agreed to establish two joint committees, one on cooperation in science and technology, and the other on economic and trade cooperation. An exchange of letters between the ASEAN secretary general and the Chinese foreign minister on 23 July 1994 in Bangkok formalized the establishment of the two committees. At the same time, ASEAN and China agreed to engage in consultations on political and security issues at senior official level. In July 1996, ASEAN accorded China full Dialogue Partner status at the Twentyninth AMM in Jakarta, moving China from a Consultative Partner, which it had been since 1991.

By early 1997, there were already five parallel frameworks for dialogue between ASEAN and China: (1) the China-ASEAN political consultation at senior official level; (2) the China-ASEAN Joint Committee on Economic and Trade Cooperation; (3) the ASEAN-China Joint Cooperation Committee (ACJCC); (4) China-ASEAN Joint Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation; and (5) the ASEAN Beijing Committee. China participated in a series of consultative meetings with ASEAN, which include the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC) 9+1 and 9+10, the Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) Meeting, the ASEAN-China Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) and the ASEANChina Business Council Meeting.