NANNING, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi arrived here on Sunday to attend a China-ASEAN summit slated for Monday in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

    The summit is to mark the 15th anniversary of the China-ASEAN dialogue relations. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will hold bilateral meetings with the ASEAN leaders respectively on the sidelines of the summit.

    Before heading for the summit, Badawi told Xinhua that China had become a close friend of ASEAN and the cooperation between the two sides had been fruitful.

    Badawi will also participate in the opening ceremony of the third China-ASEAN Expo to be opened here on Tuesday. It is the first time for him to attend the Expo.

    The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

    According to Chinese official statistics, China-ASEAN bilateral trade grew 20 percent annually over the past 15 years, reaching 130 billion U.S. dollars last year, 15 times of that in 1991.

    The trade between China and Indonesia hit 16.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2005, jumping nearly one quarter from a year earlier.