In May, the Association for 10 Country of Southeast Asian nations, known as ASEAN, will meet the six nations of the Middle East which constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council. The guest of the summit, Malaysia, invited China to participate.
China is also ready to update its free trade agreement with Asean, which includes Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. And the trade and investments between Asean and India, the most populous nation in the world, are deepening.
Great Britain has also recently baptized a new partnership. In December, a group that includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, was officially combined with the trans-Pacific Trade Bloc. London is also trying to repair his brazen economic relations with the European Union.
And Brazilian and Mexican officials spoke of the expansion of their commercial agreements.
The global economy is becoming increasingly “characterized more and more in -depth commercial relations excluding the United States”, said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior member in Brussels at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The trend is not necessarily anyone’s preference, he said, but the agreements offer a “second best” option given the refusal of America of a more open economic order. He added that the proliferation of commercial blocks, such as that between the European Union and the South American nations, has also helped countries to avoid excessive dependence on China.