China is pushing hard to conclude the world’s largest regional trade agreement, hailed as “the most important free trade deal in East Asia”, before the end of 2019 by rallying delegates from 16 countries that crucially does not include the United States.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) involves the 10 Asean nations of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos, as well as China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India.
China is a key promoter of the partnership, which is often seen as a China-led response to the now defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) put forward by the US. Beijing officially insists that it is a deal led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and that China is only playing a supporting role in the plan which mainly focuses on cutting tariffs and improving market access for services and investment across the region.
Vice-Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen, in a speech to trade delegates on Friday in central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, said RCEP is “the most important free trade deal in East Asia”.
He added that all participants should “take full advantage of the good momentum and accelerating progress at the moment” to conclude a deal by the end of the year, according to a statement released by China’s Ministry of Commerce.
The upbeat tone from Wang came a day after Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng
said that RCEP talks had achieved “much positive progress” this year and “the possibility of completing a draft text [in 2019] has increased significantly”.
China is hosting 10 days of RCEP working level talks until Wednesday, which will be followed by a ministerial-level summit in Beijing at the end of next week. It is the first time that China has hosted talks on the RCEP trade pact, which would include countries that cover around one-third of global gross domestic product and almost half the world’s population, since the discussions began in 2012.
The deal, though, has been delayed repeatedly, with members failing to reach final agreements in each of the previous 26 rounds of talks. India, for example, has raised concerns about the risk the pact would pose to its economy if it resulted in the removal of tariffs on Chinese imports.
There are also widespread calls that better labour and environmental protections are included in the deal. These often controversial issues, as well as the likes of intellectual property, free information flow and subsidies to state-owned enterprises, do not feature heavily in the agreement.
The RCEP talks will continue at the same time that Chinese and American trade negotiators will resume their talks in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
After US President Donald Trump withdrew from the TPP in January 2017, the pressure on China to forge a regional trade pact eased somewhat, however, the start of the trade war a year ago has given Beijing fresh incentive to push for a regional trade deal.
(China Morning Post)
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