The Chinese official said China and ASEANcountries should make efforts to jointly address challenges, cooperate touphold multilateralism, and coordinate to maintain regional peace.
For their part, the ambassadors said that ASEAN standsready to maintain communication and work closely with China to ensure thesuccess of the East Asian leaders’ meeting this year.
The two sides also agreed to enhance ties toexplore ways to develop a “blue economic partnership”, strengthen cooperationin the digital economy and other fields, increase people-to-people exchanges,strive to finalise the negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive EconomicPartnership (RCEP) within this year, and uphold multilateralism and free trade.
Founded in 1967, ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia,Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand andVietnam./.