Japan’s Sankei Shimbun reported on Sunday (3) that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, in an exclusive interview with renowned commentator Ryoko Sakurai, argued that China’s desire to participate in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is difficult to join with China’s current political and economic system.
In an interview with Sakurai, Kan said that Japan was looking forward to India’s participation in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement signed by Japan, China, South Korea and ASEAN (ASEAN) in November 2020, but ultimately India did not join. As for CPTPP, Kan expected the U.S. to join, except that the U.S. has left the Agreement and Japan is currently an important country participating in the two major economic organizations, RCEP and CPTPP.
Sakurai mentioned in the interview that Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s 2020 statement of intention to join the CPTPP, “This is dangerous, economic power is China’s greatest weapon to establish hegemony, China will use this weapon fully in the RCEP, and perhaps in the future in the CPTPP, a weapon.”
Kan said that until the last moment, Japan still tried to lobby India to join, Japan, as a member of RCEP, will always lobby India to join RCEP, and New Delhi is always welcome.
Referring to China’s desire to join CPTPP, Kan said that CPTPP regulations require member countries to have a very high level of market openness, which is quite a high threshold for China, saying, “It is difficult for China to participate with its current political and economic system.”
Sakurai pointed out that China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) 20 years ago, promising to the international community that it would comply with intellectual property rights protection, etc., but ended up not keeping its promise. She also believes that the threshold for joining the CPTPP is high and it is difficult for China to join, but China’s approach is to use diplomatic “fraudulent tricks” to achieve results.
He said that if CPTPP members do not agree to China’s accession, Beijing is unlikely to join, plus Japan is the rotating chair of CPTPP this year, after the United States withdrew from CPTPP, there are now 11 member states of CPTPP led by Japan, Japan has a certain degree of influence.
CPTPP, formerly known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP), was led by the U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the TPP in 2017.CPTPP is a series of free trade agreements that include participating countries to coordinate commercial policies such as trade in goods, rules of origin of goods, trade remedies, technical barriers to trade, intellectual property rights and competition policy.
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