Research On The Regional Economic Cooperation Between ASEAN And India

When regional economic integration and sub-regional economic cooperation become the trends of international economic development, ASEAN and India, two of the important economies in Asia, have complied with these trends positively and devoted themselves to the economic cooperation. So far, the development of economic cooperation between ASEAN and India have had three stages, including the stage of primary contact from 1967 when ASEAN was founded to the end of 1970s, the stage of lowering cooperation during the whole 1980s, and the stage of speedy development after 1990.Due to both ASEAN and India having strong will to take part in the economic cooperation, not only the form of regional economic cooperation as ASEAN-India Free Trade Area is being adopted, but also the form of sub-regional economic cooperation is being utilized, for example, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), Mekong-Ganges Cooperation (MGC) and Bengal, China, India and Myanmar Economic Cooperation (BCIM). On the base of the seperate introduction of the foundation, development of each economic mode, this paper analyzes the related driven factors or restricting factors, and find out reasons why the development of ASEAN-India FTA is behind that of sub-regional economic organizations, including three aspects such as different requirements about FTA and sub-regional economic organizations, drawbacks of ASEAN's way and restricting factors from India.ASEAN is a neighbor economy of both China and India. And it is obviously challenging to China because of India-ASEAN's closer cooperation in the view of FDI, trading and strategy, which author tries to do some research work on. The threats from India, however, will not have great impacts on China-ASEAN partnership, because at present India's influence power in Southeast Asia is not so strong as China's. As a result, China's attitude to this problem should be as follows: first, correctly understand the challenges posed by India and recognize that it would not affect China-India relations; Second, take ASEAN as a platform to strengthen the Sino-Indian cooperation in Southeast Asia, develop positive and healthy relationships among China, India and ASEAN.