At a Time when the fate of the Communist Party’s investment agreement with Europe is in limbo due to deteriorating bilateral ties, Chinese officials are accelerating preparations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, aiming to bring it into force in January next year.
Since the new U.S. administration took office, U.S.-China relations have not eased in the direction Beijing had hoped, but have become more tense. At the same time, relations with Japan, Canada, Australia and many European countries have deteriorated further, with a significant increase in confrontation.
The European Union and the Chinese Communist Party have imposed sanctions on each other over human rights issues in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, leading to uncertainty over whether the bilateral investment agreements they worked to reach late last year will finally be approved by the EU Parliament. Under such circumstances, analysts say, it is particularly important for the CPC to secure the RCEP agreement it reached with 15 Asia-Pacific countries, including ASEAN. If this agreement is also yellowed, it would be a major and unbearable blow to the CCP, plunging the communist state into unprecedented isolation.
Speaking at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on Thursday (March 25), Wang Shouwen, vice minister of commerce, said that all relevant departments of the Communist Party of China (CPC) have completed the approval of the RCEP agreement through joint efforts to ensure that the agreement will “officially come into effect” on Jan. 1, 2022.
Wang Shouwen said that the Ministry of Commerce of the CPC has worked with relevant departments to sort out the 701 binding obligations involved in the RCEP agreement, of which 613, or about 87 percent, “are ready for implementation now. The remaining 13 percent, Wang Shouwen promised, will be implemented as soon as the RCEP comes into force.
The binding obligations he described cover a range of areas including tariff concessions, simplification of customs procedures, technical preparation of rules of origin, product standards, services trade liberalization measures, investment negative list commitments, commitments to comprehensive intellectual property rights protection, and administrative measures and procedural compliance.
The Chinese Communist Party has been pushing for a free trade circle with ASEAN and other Asia-Pacific countries since 2012, with the intention of weakening the influence of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the formation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a China-specific agreement launched during Obama’s presidency, stole RCEP’s thunder. Trump‘s decision to withdraw from the TPP after taking office has left the RCEP as the only option facing countries in the region.
Last November, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, plus ten ASEAN countries finally agreed to this FTA, forming the world’s largest FTA. These 15 countries have a total population of 2.27 billion, a total economy of $26 trillion and total exports of $5.2 trillion, accounting for about 30 percent of the global total.
According to the U.S. Peterson Institute for International Economics, the RCEP is expected to drive a net increase of $519 billion in member countries’ exports and $186 billion in national income by 2030.
The CPC and the EU also reached a bilateral investment agreement late last year, capping a seven-year effort that lasted for both sides. The two agreements were two important diplomatic achievements by the CCP that took advantage of the change in U.S. administration and objectively posed an obstacle to U.S. efforts to unite allies to contain the CCP.
However, observers point out that man’s plans are not as good as God’s. Although the CCP has taken these two important agreements, its human rights misdeeds and aggressive war-wolf style in foreign affairs have forced more and more countries that would otherwise be willing to develop economic and trade relations with it to move closer to the U.S. side. An unprecedented international coalition is forming to contain the Chinese Communist Party.
Recent Comments