GUANGZHOU—This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone—the first in China and largely seen as paving the way for the country’s economic opening up. Since then regional development zones have sprung up across China, including the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, Lanzhou New Area, and Ningbo Economic & Technical Development Zone to name only a very select few.
One lesser-known such area making news this week is the Pan-Beibu Gulf (PBG) Economic Zone, centered on a large bay created by the coastlines of north and central Vietnam and southern China—also known as the Gulf of Tonkin. Last week, the eighth Pan-Beibu Gulf Economic Cooperation Forum was held in Nanning, China, despite the heated state of Sino-Vietnamese relations following recent clashes in the South China Sea and resultant rioting in Vietnam.
The forum, which seeks to promote closer economic ties in the region, attracted government and business officials from China, Brunei, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. The event is sponsored in part by China’s now decade-old ‘Go West’ campaign of economic development and is included under the broader framework of China-ASEAN development.
The “maritime Silk Road” was the focus of this year’s forum, especially regarding security and logistics in the shipping lanes between China and ASEAN. These lanes are of critical importance to trade between the two economies, which reached US$283.31 billion in the first eight months of 2013, making ASEAN the third largest trading partner of China. An estimated 80 percent of trade in the Gulf of Tonkin is said to depend on maritime transportation. The subject of Chinese companies relocating their manufacturing operations to Vietnam to take advantage of cheaper labor costs was also featured during the forum.
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In 2013, prior to last week’s flare-up over a Chinese oil rig in the South China Sea, China and Vietnam signed a joint agreement on oil and gas exploration in the gulf due to last through 2016. The importance for China of securing energy resources in the region is widely attributed as a driving force behind economic cooperative initiatives such as the Pan-Beibu Zone and the maritime Silk Road.
The Zone covers a landmass of 43,500 km2 and a much larger maritime region of 130,000 km2. It is home to a population of 12.4 million.
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