China’s Belt and Road Initiative with ASEAN Countries: Examining the Trade Cooperation and Impact of Coronavirus

Abstract

The rising US-China tension in the global trade war increased the trade cooperation between China and the ASEAN. Consequently, China’s total import and export volume with ASEAN increased tremendously to 684.60 billion USD in 2020, up by 6.7% year on year. This trend is part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which promotes China’s infrastructure building program in the neighboring ASEAN countries and exports China’s technical know-how and engineering standards. However, the recent coronavirus outbreak that stormed China and the rest of the world caused delays to many BRI projects. Subsequently, this outbreak also hit the ASEAN countries and halted many of their mega-projects under the BRI framework. Thus, this study attempts to highlight the trade cooperation and project developments of BRI in the ASEAN countries. In addition, the study features the landscape of BRI projects that were affected by the coronavirus amongst the ASEAN countries.