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The opening ceremony of the 12th China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit is held in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Sept. 18, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

Catalyst for integration

Seeing the potential for further growth, ASEAN leaders in 2007 adopted a blueprint envisioning an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which, after eight years, is expected to take shape by the end of this year, thus becoming the first sub-regional community in Asia.

In this context, the RCEP, an integrating framework to further facilitate China's trade with ASEAN members and beyond, will serve as a catalyst in accelerating the formation of the AEC.

The RCEP, which builds upon several existing FTAs between ASEAN and individual countries, will further integrate East Asian countries and lead to common prosperity in a future AEC.

Professor Emeritus Gary Hawke at New Zealand's Victoria University and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Jakarta-based Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia views the RCEP as essentially a move to the AEC.

"It takes what's likely to emerge out of the AEC ... and it draws on all the existing ASEAN-plus-one FTAs and thinks about how these could be further developed," Hawke said.

Bilateral trade between China and ASEAN countries reached 397.2 billion U.S. dollars in the first 10 months of 2015, while 14.3 percent of China's overseas investment went to ASEAN countries by the end of 2014, making China-ASEAN economic and trade cooperation the most substantial and fruitful in East Asia, said Gao.

Gao's pledge that China will continue to aid underdeveloped countries in the region seems to have echoed the concern of analysts, who said the AEC and RCEP also offer a testing ground for economic cooperation among ASEAN countries -- particularly the underdeveloped members.