STORY: China-ASEAN Expo a major achievement in ongoing cooperation: ASEAN chief
DATELINE: Sept. 17, 2023
LENGTH: 00:02:21
LOCATION: NANNING, China
CATEGORY: ECONOMY

SHOTLIST:
1. various of Nanning City and the 20th China-ASEAN Expo
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): KAO KIM HOURN, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): KAO KIM HOURN, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
4. SOUNDBITE 3 (English): KAO KIM HOURN, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

STORYLINE:

Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Kao Kim Hourn said that the China-ASEAN Expo is a major achievement in terms of the ongoing cooperation.

The 20th China-ASEAN Expo opened on Saturday in China's Nanning, with nearly 2,000 enterprises attending.

SOUNDBITE 1 (English): KAO KIM HOURN, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
"The China-ASEAN Expo has been a very important mechanism as a platform to promote actively the trade, investment, tourism, business matching, for example, between ASEAN and China for two decades. This is a major achievement in terms of the ongoing cooperation between both sides."

The two sides have been each other's top trading partners for three years in a row.

In the first half of this year, ASEAN remained China's biggest trading partner, with the bilateral trade in goods rising 5.4 percent year on year to 3.08 trillion yuan (about 428 billion U.S. dollars).

SOUNDBITE 2 (English): KAO KIM HOURN, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
"I think ASEAN leaders, ministers and senior officials and officials have been coming to Nanning in the past 20 years to promote our cooperation. And that's why I think we can say that one of the products of the China-ASEAN Expo would be the sustained trading that we have between ASEAN and China."

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the China-ASEAN Expo and the 10th anniversary of building a closer China-ASEAN community with a shared future.

SOUNDBITE 3 (English): KAO KIM HOURN, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
"So I can see that this year we see a number of ASEAN leaders will be coming to Nanning to not just only commemorate the 20 years of achievements, but also to look forward to the future where we will continue to ensure that China-ASEAN Expo will remain relevant, resilient and certainly that it will be productive to continue to be part of the ASEAN-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Nanning, China.
(XHTV)