By Jin Sanlin, He Dongni & Gan Lu, Research Team on “Study on the Belt and Road Economic Corridor”, DRC

Research Report, No.177, 2018 (Total 5452) 2018-10-23

Abstract: In recent years, China has made positive progress in economic and trade cooperation with countries in Indochina Peninsula, and the construction of economic corridor has shown a sound development momentum, but at the same time, there are also problems to be addressed such as unbalanced development of trade and investment, inadequate interconnection facilities, high risks in further financial and monetary cooperation, and barriers relating to respective religions and culture. In the future, we need to take an economic-integration-oriented approach, focus on free trade strategy and international industrial-capacity cooperation, improve the corridor cooperation mechanism, and turn the China-Indochina economic corridor into an international industrial-capacity cooperation demonstration zone, an international cooperation demonstration zone for agricultural modernization, and a model for people to people exchanges and cooperation in terms of the “Belt and Road Initiative”. We also need to determine the cooperation priorities with different countries in light of their national policies. Therefore, we need to speed up the free trade move in the China-Indochina economic corridor, push forward the reform of foreign investment system, innovate the overseas investment and financing mechanism, build efficient, convenient and safe customs clearance procedures, and improve the cooperation mechanism for cultural exchanges.

Key words: China-Indochina Peninsula economic corridor, construction approaches, policy options