A STATE OF THE ART EXERCISE

A totality of China's activities in Southeast Asia at the dawn of the new millenium is often defined as charm or peace offensive, and there is no affectation in these definitions. Although in fact it got started somewhat earlier, many analysts tend to associate its full-scale launching with the Sixteenth Congress of the Communist Party of China. In November 2002, less than a week before the opening of the Congress, ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed The Framework Agreement on Economic Cooperation with the People's Republic of China, making a pledge to establish a Free Trade Area (FTA) in ten years. The parties also signed joint declarations on cooperation in the struggle with nontraditional security threats and on conduct in the South China Sea area. The second document, not solving the famous territorial disputes in this part of the world, seemed especially valuable for Beijing's partners as a sign of its readiness to work together on issues of discontent with other claimants to the South China Sea islands and with ASEAN as a whole.

In less than a year, as the PRC acceded to the Balinese Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, China and ASEAN announced the establishment of a “strategic partnership for peace and prosperity” (October 2003). From that time on, the process of formalizing strategic partnerships has continued at bilateral levels between China and individual ASEAN members. One of the last agreements of this type was signed with Indonesia in April 2005.

The dynamic of trade and economic relations corresponds with the intensity of diplomatic contacts and the cheerful tonality of joint statements. If in the mid-1990s China's annual total trade with ASEAN was around US$15 billion, in 2002 it exceeded US$50 billion, in 2003 came close to US$70 billion and in 2004, according to the statement by the PRC Chairman Hu Jintao made during a visit to the Philippines (April 2005), reached US$105.9 billion.