China-ASEAN trade expected to hit USD 500 billion

China-ASEAN bilateral trade surged from 7 billion U.S. dollars in the early days of dialogue relations to 362.8 billion last year, with an average annual growth of more than 20 percent, according to the statistics by the ninth China-ASEAN Expo, which runs from Sept. 21 to 25 in Nanning. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping has voiced his hopes on working more vigorously to develop the FTA, and that the two sides will continue to implement FTA agreements and optimize the mix of import and export commodities, in order to meet the trade volume target of 500 billion U.S. dollars by 2015. China has been the ASEAN's largest trading partner for three consecutive years and the ASEAN has become China's third-largest trading partner. In 2010, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (FTA) was launched. Covering a total population of 1.9 billion, it became the developing world's largest FTA zone. Lim Hong Hin, deputy secretary-general of the ASEAN, said that when the China-Asean FTA was first established, there were concerns from ASEAN members as to whether they could compete with such a big, resource-rich economy as China.