China today unveiled a $10 billion fund and liberal credit lines to help promote a range of infrastructure projects in Southeast Asian nations reeling from the global economic crisis.
China planned to establish a China-ASEAN investment cooperation fund totaling $10 billion, designed for cooperation on infrastructure construction, energy and resources, information and communications, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said here.
Yang met with envoys of the 10 ASEAN countries soon after his return from Thailand where the scheduled Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings were postponed yesterday due to anti-government protests.
"The overall thought for China-ASEAN cooperation is that the two sides should rise to difficulties in face of the grim global financial crisis, and make efforts to convert unprecedented challenge into opportunity for closer pragmatic cooperation and common development," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Yang as saying.
"As always, China firmly backs ASEAN integration and community building, and firmly supports ASEAN playing a leading role in regional cooperation," he said.
Yang said China called for joint efforts to reach an investment agreement, which was scheduled to be signed on the sidelines of the postponed meetings.
The agreement would be conducive to the establishment of the China-ASEAN free trade zone.
Over the next three to five years, China planned to offer credit of $15 billion to ASEAN countries, including loans with preferential terms of $1.7 billion in aid for cooperation projects.
China also planned to offer $39.7 million in special aid to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar to meet urgent needs, inject $5 million into the China-ASEAN Cooperation Fund, and donate $900,000 to the cooperation fund of ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea.
China would provide 300,000 tonnes of rice for the emergency East Asia rice reserve to strengthen food security in the region.
China would offer an extra 2,000 government scholarships and 200 master's scholarships for public administration students from the developing member countries over the next five years.
All the envoys said the proposals would exert profound and active influence on China-ASEAN cooperation, and would enormously support ASEAN countries during the global financial crisis.
ASEAN member countries are Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei, Vietnam, Indonesia.
