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Depth | The world’s largest free trade agreement sets sail, who is the biggest winner?
The country is through the train
The “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement” (RCEP) was signed by video on the 15th. A huge free trade agreement covering approximately 30% of the world’s population, economic output and total trade will officially set sail thereafter. .
8 years of sharpening a sword
It is not easy for RCEP to “grow and succeed”.
In November 2012, during the East Asian Leaders Meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the leaders of the ten ASEAN countries and China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand jointly issued a joint statement on the launch of the RCEP negotiations, officially launching this initiative. The construction process of the commercial area.
According to the original assumption, the RCEP should substantially conclude the negotiations from 2015. However, due to the different interests of all parties, the negotiation process has been delayed.
In November 2019, after 27 rounds of negotiations, all 15 RCEP member states, except India, concluded textual negotiations on all 20 chapters, as well as negotiations on virtually all market access issues.
Since the beginning of this year, the sudden epidemic has hampered the free movement of people and brought new problems to the RCEP’s follow-up work. However, all parties have overcome difficulties, completed market access negotiations comprehensively and completed the review of more than 14,000 pages of legal documents of the agreement.
In the words of Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Commerce and Deputy Representative for International Trade Negotiations, the RCEP negotiations have gone through several “ups and downs.” However, what is ultimately presented is a comprehensive, high-quality, modern, and mutually beneficial deal.
——RCEP covers 20 chapters, including market access for trade in goods, trade in services, and investment, as well as a host of regulations such as trade facilitation, intellectual property rights, electronic commerce, competition policy, and public procurement. It can be said that the agreement covers all aspects of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation.
——The total number of products without tariffs in the RCEP trade in goods exceeds 90%, and the level of liberalization of trade in services and investments is also significantly higher than the “10 + 1” free trade agreement original.
—— RCEP adopts the regional origin accumulation rules to support the development of the regional industrial chain supply chain; adopts new technologies to promote customs facilitation and promotes the development of new cross-border logistics; adopts a negative list to make investment access commitments, which greatly improves the transparency of investment policies; The agreement also includes high-level intellectual property and e-commerce chapters to meet the needs of the digital economy.
——In addition, the RCEP has also added a free trade relationship between China, Japan and Japan and South Korea, which has significantly increased the degree of free trade in the region.
In view of the huge gap in the level of economic development and the scale of the different member states of the agreement, the agreement also takes into account the demands of all parties to the greatest extent possible and achieves a balance of interests in the areas of access to markets and regulations such as goods, services and investment. In addition, the agreement also grants differential treatment to least developed countries and specifically establishes two chapters on SMEs and economic and technical cooperation to help developing members strengthen capacity building.
The world economy injects a “strong shot”
As the largest free trade agreement in the world, the official signing of RCEP will bring significant benefits to Asia and the entire world economy.
Zhang Jianping, Director of the Research Center for Regional Economic Cooperation, Research Institute of the Ministry of CommerceIn an interview with a reporter for the China News Agency, the state is through the train, RCEP is a “driver” for the slow world economy hit by the epidemic. For many years, the Asia-Pacific region has been a major engine driving global economic growth. The implementation of RCEP will further improve the quality of economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region, promote the stability of the industrial chain and supply chain, and further promote the development of the Asia-Pacific and world economy.
Gao Lingyun, Researcher, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social SciencesHe also stated that the RCEP will allow the Asia-Pacific region to emerge from the shock wave of the epidemic as soon as possible and accelerate its economic recovery. Furthermore, the global economic center of gravity has shifted fromAtlanticmove toThe Pacific OceanThe signing and implementation of the RCEP will allow factors of production and resources to flow further into the Pacific region and will better promote the revitalization of the world economy.
More importantly, when the epidemic has accelerated unilateralism and protectionism, the 15 member states of the RCEP insisted on advancing negotiations and eventually signed an agreement, which undoubtedly supported free trade and economic globalization with tangible actions. It is even more significant for the world economy.
As Wang Shouwen said, the signing of the RCEP demonstrates that all members are committed to reducing tariffs, opening up markets and lowering standard barriers. Sends a strong signal against unilateralism and protectionism, strongly supports free trade and the multilateral trading system, and helps The global economy has formed positive expectations, driving the global economic recovery after the epidemic.
China’s economy receives multiple benefits
The Chinese economy will also benefit significantly from the signing of RCEP.
RCEP members are China’s important economic and trade partners. From January to September 2020, China’s total trade with other RCEP members reached $ 1.055 billion, accounting for about a third of China’s total foreign trade.
Today, ASEAN has overtaken the EU as China’s largest trading partner. The signing of the RCEP will further expand the scale of trade between China and ASEAN and promote the stability and improvement of China’s foreign trade.
“It is foreseeable that the status and influence of China and ASEAN in the mutual trade structure will further improve,” Gao Lingyun said.
China’s dominant position in the supply chain structure of the global industrial chain will also be consolidated.
Gao Lingyun said that after the signing of RCEP, China and ASEAN will accelerate the formation of an expanded version of the “world factory”, that is, the “China + ASEAN” world factory, and the agglomeration effect of the industrial chain and the supply chain will expand even further. In this case, the idea of trying to “decouple” China’s industrial supply chain will increasingly lose value and operability.
“With RCEP, China will have a better platform and more space to build a new dual-cycle development pattern, which can allocate resources more efficiently and support economic growth,” said Zhang Jianping.
For the public and businesses, RCEP will also bring many benefits.
For example, the total number of duty-free goods in the RCEP trade in goods exceeds 90%, which means that after the implementation of the agreement, Chinese consumers will be able to enjoy high-quality foreign goods at a lower price. , and the cost of buying imported raw materials and equipment will be less. It is conducive to reducing the burden on companies and stimulating investment.
Start not finish
In recent years, despite the continued rise in unilateralism and protectionism, the pace of China’s signing of high-level free trade agreements has not slowed, but rather accelerated. Analysts believe that the signing of the RCEP will also have a positive effect on future negotiations of the China free trade agreement.
Zhang Jianping said that RCEP has added a new free trade relationship between China, Japan and Japan and South Korea, which provides good preparation for China, Japan and South Korea to reach a free trade agreement with a higher level of opening based on RCEP.
“The RCEP negotiation is a negotiation of specific rules on the surface, but in fact it is a process of adjusting national laws and regulations to adapt to high international standards.” Gao Lingyun said that after the RCEP negotiation, China’s institutional opening will be accelerated, with rules and regulations. The level is further improved and the bargaining power will be stronger when trade agreements with other developed economies are negotiated in the future.
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