Source: Xinhua, Nov 14, 2020

NANNING — Not just Chinese shoppers but consumers in Southeast Asia were also revved up for China's annual "double 11" online shopping festival that falls on Nov 11 this year.

Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have witnessed robust trade growth.

In the first 10 months of the year, China-ASEAN bilateral trade volume reached 3.79 trillion yuan (about $571.64 billion), accounting for 14.6 percent of China's foreign trade, up 7 percent from the same period last year, according to the General Administration of Customs (GACC).

Meanwhile, with conventional trade surging, China and ASEAN have deepened cooperation in the digital economy, manifesting huge potential to boost market consumption.

Guangxi is China's gateway to ASEAN. Thanks to cross-border e-commerce platforms, more and more products are being traded online in the region.

Digital services, including online cross-border shopping, online education and telemedicine, are more widely used and the consumption patterns of global consumers continue to be innovated with the development of the digital economy.

China's value-added digital economy registered 35.8 trillion yuan in 2019, accounting for 36.2 percent of the country's GDP, up by 1.4 percentage points compared with the previous year, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

This year is designated as the China-ASEAN Year of Digital Economy Cooperation. ASEAN's digital economy is estimated to increase from 1.3 percent of GDP in 2015 to 8.5 percent in 2025, according to Lim Jock Hoi, Secretary-General of ASEAN.

China is leading in the development of digital infrastructure and is an important partner of ASEAN to promote the digital economy in the region, Lim noted.