General

The close neighbors facing each other across the sea, mutual trusted friends and partners for common development are just a reflection of the harmonious coexistence between China and Brunei.     Hassanal said that he is willing to work with China to promote Brunei China relations to a higher level, and welcomes China to actively participate in Brunei's economic diversification process, strengthen exchanges and cooperation in economy, trade, education, people to people and cultural exchanges, sports, defense and other fields, and achieve win-win results in international trade cooperation.

Economic, trade and investment cooperation continued to deepen

By 2023, it will be five years since the establishment of strategic cooperative partnership in Chinese. Looking back on the course of international trade cooperation between the two countries over the past few years, there are really many highlights. China has become Brunei's second largest trading partner and the largest source of foreign capital. In 2021, the volume of bilateral international trade in Chinese will reach 2.85 billion US dollars, more than 200 times that at the beginning of the establishment of diplomatic ties. In the first nine months of this year, the volume of international trade in Chinese reached US $2.26 billion, up 8.4% year on year. Among them, China's exports to Brunei reached 560 million US dollars, up 21.4% year on year; China's imports from Brunei reached 1.7 billion US dollars, up 4.7% year on year.

Chinese enterprises are an important direction for Brunei to attract overseas investment. These investments not only create a lot of employment opportunities for Brunei, but also promote Brunei's GDP, becoming an important driving force for Brunei's economic development. By 2021, Chinese enterprises have signed engineering contracts in Brunei totaling 3.63 billion US dollars and completed a turnover of 4.26 billion US dollars. In 2021, the amount of new project contracts signed by Chinese enterprises in Brunei will be 52.51 million US dollars, with a year-on-year growth of 73.4%. The key projects undertaken or participated in by Chinese enterprises, such as the Urudu East Dam, the Trise Lumu Expressway, the Great Mora Island Bridge and the Omar Saifuding Bridge in Sudan, have significantly improved Brunei's connectivity and played a positive role in promoting local economic and social development.

The joint construction of the "the Belt and Road" has yielded fruitful results

In recent years, the fields of cooperation between the two countries have been expanding, which has led to the great development of high-quality joint construction of the "the Belt and Road". The success of Hengyi Brunei Petrochemical Project, Mora Port and other major projects has not only promoted the development of Chinese economic, trade and investment cooperation, but also promoted the trade cooperation between Brunei and other countries.

As an oil producing country, Brunei's national economy is heavily dependent on the international crude oil market. To this end, the Brunei government has put forward the "2035 Ambition" development strategy to continuously promote economic diversification and further reduce the excessive dependence on international crude oil trade exports. Hengyi Brunei Petrochemical Project, as the flagship project of the Chinese joint communique, is an important strategic decision for Brunei to layout the downstream of the oil and gas industry chain and economic diversification. Hengyi Petrochemical Brunei Phase I Project has been operating at full capacity since it entered into commercial operation, and the load can be increased to 110% or more according to market conditions. Recently, Hengyi Petrochemical said that the Brunei Phase II project has received the preliminary approval letter from the Brunei government. According to the project planning, the reclamation construction of the dike is being carried out in an orderly manner. At present, all work in Brunei Phase II is being carried out in an orderly manner.

Guangxi Beibu Gulf Port and Brunei Mora Port are friendly ports. On July 8 this year, Beibu Gulf Port and Mora Port signed a memorandum of cooperation on jointly promoting the new channel of international land and sea trade and the connectivity of the East ASEAN Growth Area. The memorandum of cooperation will further promote the high-quality joint construction of the "the Belt and Road" and the new land and sea channel in western China. It is understood that Beibu Gulf Port Group has deeply participated in Brunei's economic construction, successively invested in Mora Port and Mora Fishing Port, and has improved the efficiency and profitability of the port year by year with the help of scientific management. The port has undergone tremendous changes.

In addition to Hengyi Petrochemical, several cooperation projects such as "Guangxi Brunei Economic Corridor" have also made positive contributions to Brunei's accelerated economic development and economic diversification.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries more than 30 years ago, the Chinese language relations have been developing healthily and rapidly, political mutual trust has been deepening, and practical cooperation in various fields has been expanding continuously, which has brought tangible benefits to the two peoples. The effective implementation of RCEP and the promotion of many good neighborly and rich neighborly initiatives will surely bring the Chinese language relations to a new level.