When recalling his first sale of electrical products to China in 2002, Yuen Minkui, a Vietnamese electrical component salesman currently attending the second China-ASEAN Expo, is still proud of his pioneering experience in expanding business to the Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Gansu.

Now the tax reduction plan under the China-ASEAN free trade agreement has inspired him with a more ambitious business expansion plan in China.

Yuen has paid close attention to the development of China's "region-based economy", and is confident "it's the right time for my ambitious expansion plan."

"I used to judge business opportunities in China from a provincial perspective. Maybe I need to take a breath and look at economic growth areas based on regions," said Yuen.

Businessmen from the ASEAN nations have been studying the emergence of regional economies in China as the market economy develops, and many of them have derived benefits.

They sense that China will continue to boost economic growth in regional to replace the traditional mode of development in individual provinces, which is outlined in the proposal of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee for the formulation of the country's 11th five-year (2006-2010) program for economic and social development.

This means more opportunities for business growth for them.

The traditional "province-based economy" refers to economic development based on the administrative division of a province, while "region-based economy" presents a pattern based on similar or complementary economies of different regions, said Gu Xiaosong with the Academy of Social Sciences of Guangxi.

After two decades of development, China has formed several"economic clusters" based on regions, including the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei circle, the west region, central China region, and the northeast industrial belt.

The fifth plenary session of the 16th CPC Central Committee, which ended last week, listed "harmonious regional development" as one of the six key points of its proposal for the 2006-2010 program.

Fred Hu, an economist with Hong-Kong based Goldman and Sachs, argues that the shift in China's economic focus from "province" to "region" matches the ASEAN's move to upgrade industries and build regional economic circles and thereby improve people's living standards.

Gu Xiaosong points out that the development of China's region-based economy will give the ASEAN more opportunities in labor, capital, technology and information.

China is actively involved in promoting trade with the neighboring nations and pushing forward regional cooperation. The China-ASEAN free trade area (FTA) will be completed in 2010.

Regional economic integration has brought China and other Asian countries closer together. In 2004, the ASEAN became China's fourth largest trade partner. That year, trade between China, the ASEAN, Japan and the Republic of Korea as a whole topped 350 billion US dollars, accounting for nearly one third of China's total foreign trade.

ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong said, "The launch of the FTA has brought abundant profits to China and ASEAN countries. As China builds region-based economic areas, more space will open up for FTA development."

Taking mechanical and electrical products as an example, Song Zhiyong, an official with China's Ministry of Commerce, explained the potential business opportunities in a region-based economy: ASEAN countries both import mechanical-electrical products from China and export mechanical-electrical components to China, speeding up the formation of the China-ASEAN regional economic circle.

Experts believe the joint efforts by China and the ASEAN to build the FTA will bring a bright future to the lands which bred ancient Oriental culture.

Source: Xinhua