JAKARTA, May 7-- Visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday met here with Lim Jock Hoi, secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with both sides vowing to strengthen economic cooperation and reach the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) at an early date. China highly values the cooperation with ASEAN and firmly supports the building of the ASEAN community, Li said. China supports ASEAN's central role in regional cooperation and supports it to play a bigger role in building an open and inclusive regional mechanism, he added. China is willing to take the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the China-ASEAN strategic partnership as an opportunity to build a higher-level strategic partnership, and build a closer community of shared destiny, the Chinese premier said. He pointed out that as developing economies, China and ASEAN enjoy huge cooperation potential. Under the current economic circumstance of the world, both sides should firmly safeguard multilateralism and free trade, push forward regional cooperation, and promote the RCEP to obtain substantial progress, Li said. China and ASEAN should continue to view each other's development as an opportunity, and align each other's development strategy under the principle of mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win, in a bid to build a peaceful and friendly common homeland, Li suggested. |