Recently, the Annual Report on the Development of Southeast Asia (2016) was released in Beijing. Compiled by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University, the report indicates that there are many points of integration between the ASEAN Community and the “Belt and Road” initiative on the basis of the ASEAN Community’s blueprint, which covers vision planning and development until 2025. This will provide realistic conditions for strategic hub and regional cooperation between both sides, according to the report.

The formal establishment of the ASEAN Community was declared at the end of 2015. Based on the existing construction of the ASEAN Community, the ASEAN formulated the ASEAN Community’s development goal, primary mission and strategic measures to be completed by 2015. The report says that the ASEAN Community will still take ASEAN political and security cooperation, regional economic integration and sociocultural inclusiveness as the three big pillars in line with the ASEAN Community’s vision planning and development blueprint by 2025.

The ASEAN political and security community pursues people orientation, shared values and standards based on systems to further promote ASEAN’s cooperative level in political and security fields. The ASEAN economic community aims to establish and improve single markets, realizing the free mobility of commodities, services, investment, capital and skilled workers while the ASEAN sociocultural community aims to achieve people orientation, a friendly environment and sustainable development.

The report points out that the ASEAN Community and the “Belt and Road” both take political mutual trust, economic integration and cultural inclusiveness as important pillars with similar strategic plans, cooperation priorities, capacity cooperation and people-to-people exchanges. The ASEAN’s significance in “Belt and Road” international capacity cooperation will become increasingly prominent along with the rise of the ASEAN economy and the implementation of the “Belt and Road” initiative. ASEAN will play an important role in the interconnectivity construction of the “Belt and Road.”