Back to feed
Economy
23rd China-ASEAN Expo Wraps in Nanning: All 11 ASEAN Members Gather for First Time, Over 500 Deals Signed as CAFTA 3.0 Era Begins
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
The 23rd China-ASEAN Expo (CAEXPO), held alongside the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit (CABIS), ran September 17-21 in Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and closed successfully on September 21. As one of the largest and highest-level trade and economic gatherings between China and ASEAN, this year's expo set a new record for scale and is widely viewed as a landmark moment marking the formal start of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 (CAFTA 3.0) era. The exhibition covered roughly 170,000 square meters, up 10,000 square meters from the previous edition, and drew more than 3,400 exhibiting companies from over 70 countries and regions, a 5.3 percent increase in exhibitor numbers year on year.
The expo's official theme was "CAFTA 3.0 Opportunities, Better Life" (in Chinese, 共享3.0机遇，共创美好生活), reflecting the shift from the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area's 2.0 framework to its 3.0 upgrade, whose protocol was formally signed in October 2025. More historically significant, this edition marked the first time all 11 ASEAN member states, following the bloc's expansion, gathered together in Nanning. Timor-Leste, ASEAN's newest member, made its debut at CAEXPO as both a full member state and a formal co-organizer, completing the platform's map of cooperation. The Philippines served as the expo's "country of honor" for the second time, with 44 registered companies spanning food, household products, personal care, tourism and financial services.
On the economic front, the expo and its accompanying investment summit produced more than 500 signed trade and economic cooperation agreements. Of these, 41 projects were signed along the eight cities of the Pinglu Canal Economic Belt, while another 19 international cooperation projects were finalized, covering seven ASEAN countries. Among industrial investment agreements, manufacturing accounted for more than 90 percent, underscoring that tangible industrial cooperation remains the backbone of bilateral economic ties. Analysts note that the Pinglu Canal, a new waterway linking Guangxi to the Beibu Gulf, is emerging as a fresh growth point for deeper China-ASEAN industrial and supply chain integration.
Artificial intelligence emerged as another standout theme at this year's expo. Organizers said the AI exhibition area expanded by 60 percent compared with the previous edition, while the number of participating AI companies rose 48 percent year on year to 296. The expo also introduced, for the first time, an "AI supermarket" format, showcasing more than 500 AI-related products across eight categories. During the event, nearly 100 preliminary cooperation agreements were reached in the AI sector, with the expected value of related projects aimed at ASEAN countries projected to exceed 1 billion yuan, while on-site product transactions in the AI exhibition area topped 28 million yuan. The figures suggest that emerging fields such as computing power, semiconductors, robotics and outbound digital services are being woven ever more tightly into the China-ASEAN economic cooperation framework.
The expo's success reflects the broader momentum in China-ASEAN economic ties. China's Ministry of Commerce disclosed earlier that bilateral trade between China and ASEAN surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2025, reaching $1.05 trillion, up 7.4 percent year on year. China has remained ASEAN's largest trading partner for 17 consecutive years, while ASEAN has been China's largest trading partner for six straight years, underscoring that each bloc is now the other's single most important trade partner.
Momentum has only accelerated into 2026. Commerce Ministry data shows that in the first seven months of this year, total China-ASEAN trade reached $744.41 billion, a sharp 24.7 percent increase year on year, with ASEAN's share of China's total foreign trade rising to 21.8 percent over the same period. That points to ASEAN's growing weight within China's overall trade structure — and this year's expo, held not long after that data was released, served as a practical platform for both sides to consolidate their trade partnership and seize new opportunities under the CAFTA 3.0 framework.
The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 upgrade protocol was formally signed in October 2025, marking the first time emerging fields such as the digital economy, green economy and industrial and supply chain connectivity were folded into an institutionalized cooperation framework. That signals a shift in bilateral economic cooperation from traditional goods trade and tariff reductions toward forward-looking regulatory alignment and cooperation in emerging industries. Several ASEAN-facing smart manufacturing and digital projects were finalized at this year's expo, seen as an early sign that the 3.0 protocol is moving from paper agreement to concrete practice.
For the regional economy, the significance of this year's expo lies not just in the number of deals signed, but in the structural signals it sent: the first-ever gathering of all 11 ASEAN members, the Philippines' deep engagement as country of honor, and the explosive growth of emerging sectors such as AI, together sketch a picture of China-ASEAN economic cooperation evolving beyond traditional manufacturing and commodity trade toward more diversified, technology-intensive directions. At the same time, the fact that manufacturing still accounts for more than 90 percent of signed industrial investment projects is a reminder that deep integration of tangible industrial supply chains remains the most solid foundation of the bilateral economic relationship.
It is worth noting that the China-ASEAN Expo, first held in 2004, has now run for 23 consecutive editions in Nanning, making it one of the longest-running and most institutionally stable platforms for regular economic and trade exchange between China and ASEAN. The concurrent China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit (CABIS) provides a deeper space for policy dialogue and project matchmaking among companies, investors and government agencies on both sides. Over more than two decades, the expo has evolved from a straightforward goods fair into a comprehensive platform combining goods trade, investment promotion, industrial matchmaking and regulatory dialogue — and this year's emphasis on artificial intelligence, the digital economy and the green economy is the latest expression of that evolution.
Looking ahead, as the CAFTA 3.0 protocol is progressively implemented and infrastructure projects such as the Pinglu Canal continue to generate logistics and industrial spillover effects, China-ASEAN economic cooperation is expected to sustain relatively high growth for the remainder of 2026. This year's expo, as an annual observation window, offered outside observers a concrete and comprehensive sample for gauging that process — from trillion-dollar-scale trade volume down to the nearly 3,400 companies and more than 500 signed agreements inside Nanning's exhibition halls, two sides of the same story of regional economic integration that reinforce one another.
