On the first anniversary of its entry into force, RCEP unleashes great vitality (global hotspots)
On January 1, 2023, the first anniversary of the signing and entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP). Over the past year, against the background of the changing international situation and the continued downturn of the global economy, RCEP has fully released the dividends of the mechanism, effectively deepening the economic links between Asian economies, effectively boosting the confidence in regional trade and investment in Asia, and further strengthening the The resilience of the industrial chain and supply chain within the region will inject new momentum into the construction of a unified market within the region and the realization of global prosperity and development. Facing the future, RCEP member countries will fully unleash their potential, complement each other's advantages, promote the deep integration of regional value chains, and make greater contributions to regional and global economic and trade development.
Vigorously promote regional economic and trade cooperation
From January 1, 2022, RCEP will come into effect for 10 countries including Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, and for South Korea from February 1, and from March 18 Effective for Malaysia and effective for Myanmar from May 1. Currently, 13 of the 15 signatories have entered into force. Since RCEP came into force, member states have held multiple multi-field joint meetings to negotiate and promote the implementation of the agreement. At the same time, the RCEP Industrial Cooperation Committee was established to promote trade, investment, and industrial cooperation among countries.
It is worth noting that RCEP established free trade relations between China and Japan, as well as South Korea and Japan, for the first time. From January to June 2022, the bilateral import and export trade volume between China and Japan, South Korea and Japan will be 20.3 trillion yen and 5.5 trillion yen respectively, an increase of 10.6% and 25.5% over the same period in 2021, respectively. In addition, under the framework of RCEP, China, Japan and South Korea have cooperated in the fields of machinery manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, and optoelectronic equipment manufacturing, laying the foundation for regional value chain cooperation among the three countries in high-end manufacturing industries such as new technologies and new energy.
"The RCEP has been in force for one year and has brought huge economic benefits and higher social welfare to member states." Gao Lingyun, director of the International Investment Research Office of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told our reporter. In the area of investment, the 13 approved member states have successively adopted tariff relief measures of varying degrees, which has promoted the growth of trade scale between them; in the field of investment, the agreement has introduced issues such as investment promotion, investment protection, investment facilitation and liberalization. , all members promised to adopt the negative list method, which enhanced investment attractiveness and intellectual property protection; in the field of industrial chain supply chain, RCEP not only expanded the original regional network of industrial chain supply chain, but also further strengthened the protection of industrial chain supply chain. Stickiness and stability; in terms of social welfare level, RCEP member countries can obtain consumer goods that better meet their own needs under the same expenditure, which greatly improves the welfare level of the people in member countries.
"The formal entry into force of RCEP plays an important role in maintaining the multilateral trading system and promoting regional economic cooperation." Liu Junhong, director of the Globalization Research Center of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told our reporter that RCEP is a series of arrangements represented by the cumulative rules of origin. It is effectively reducing production costs in the region, improving trade efficiency, and strengthening industrial and supply chain cooperation in the region. In the past year since it came into effect, RCEP has not only promoted the continuous adjustment and expansion of the overall trade structure among member countries, but also further expanded the overall scale of RCEP’s trade outside the region. For example, the volume of container shipments from East Asian ports to North America has reached a record high. an indicator of consideration.
China keeps its promises and has contributed a lot
"RCEP is not only the free trade agreement with the largest population and largest economic and trade scale in the world, but also a comprehensive, modern, high-quality and reciprocal free trade agreement." Gao Lingyun believes that the formal entry into force of RCEP is the result of the joint efforts of member states, reflecting a comprehensive Sexuality, advancement and inclusiveness.
- RCEP covers a comprehensive range of areas. Its main chapters include not only trade and investment facilitation and related opening commitments in traditional fields such as trade in goods, service trade, and investment, but also new trade rules involving a large number of post-border issues such as intellectual property rights, e-commerce, competition policy, and government procurement.
——RCEP explores a series of high-standard economic and trade rules. In terms of intellectual property rights, there are a total of 83 articles, not only including trademarks, patents, copyrights, etc., but also involving a wide range of issues such as transparency, anti-unfair competition, and technical assistance. In the field of trade in services, RCEP members promise to implement the negative list within six years after the agreement takes effect. The level of openness not only exceeds the WTO, but also exceeds the existing "ASEAN+1" free trade agreement. In terms of e-commerce rules, RCEP is the multilateral e-commerce rules with the widest scope and the largest number of members reached in the Asia-Pacific region, and it is also the e-commerce agreement with the highest level of China's participation.
- RCEP fully demonstrates inclusiveness. Fully considering the different development levels and economic needs of member states, and giving less developed member states a certain transition period or exception clauses, RCEP has set up a transition period of about 20 years for market opening, gradually realizing zero tariffs on imports of 90% of tax items, and providing for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and other member states have provided a transitional period for domestic legislation and improvement of the regulatory system.
"RCEP strives to find a balance between high standards and diversity, creating opportunities for the transfer and restructuring of industrial and supply chains in the region." Liu Junhong said that RCEP is a multilateral cooperation framework that fully takes into account diversity. RCEP maximizes the integration of the "fragmented" economic and trade institutional arrangements in East Asia through the unification of tariff commitments, rules of origin, trade and investment facilitation, and other trade rules, that is, the integration of 27 trade arrangements currently signed and implemented by 15 member states and 44 investment treaties. Facing the different interest demands of member states, RCEP has set up some progressive institutional arrangements, that is, each member state can arrange the tax reduction rate and negative list process according to its own situation. In addition, RCEP stipulates some exemption clauses for special and differential treatment in dispute settlement, which embodies the spirit of fairness, justice, tolerance and mutual benefit.
China has always been an important participant and active promoter of RCEP. Over the past year, in order to implement RCEP smoothly, six departments including the Ministry of Commerce of China jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on the High-Quality Implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement" to implement the agreement's service trade opening commitments and investment negative list commitments, and promote Enterprises can make better use of policy dividends. From July to August 2022, the RCEP Industrial Cooperation Committee and more than 10 national business associations in China signed the "Strategic Cooperation Memorandum" respectively, agreeing to jointly help China and other RCEP member countries to cooperate in new developments in related industries.
"In the past year, China has kept its promises and made great contributions to RCEP." Gao Lingyun said that first, China began to fully implement the terms of tariff concessions on the first day that RCEP came into effect; second, it used multilateral cooperation platforms to assist other members The countries are familiar with the preferential policies and facilitation rules in the agreement, and share the development opportunities in the Chinese market; the third is to help the countries that are relatively backward in the development stage of the member states to carry out development capacity building, and provide more technical and financial support; the fourth is to implement the system We will continue to promote the quality and upgrading of RCEP.
It is expected to project dividends to the world
Gu Qingyang, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said that in the context of the world's economic difficulties, RCEP has injected strong growth momentum into emerging markets. The latest report of the Asian Development Bank raised the economic growth forecast for Southeast Asia in 2022 from 5.1% to 5.5%, reflecting to a certain extent the RCEP's expectation of stimulating the economy of ASEAN countries.
Peter Drysdale, director of the Institute of East Asian Economics at the Australian National University, said that in the first year of its entry into force, RCEP has shown the importance of filling the gaps in free trade agreements, boosting regional trade, and strengthening regional supply chains, and has the potential to serve as a platform Project Asian trade dividends to the world.
"The formal entry into force of RCEP has brought development opportunities to the world economy full of conflicts, problems and challenges." Gao Lingyun said, firstly, the official entry into force of RCEP has injected confidence into free trade, multilateralism and regional economic integration; The current dividend provides stability and certainty for the regional economy and the world economy, and alleviates the impact of unilateralism and trade protectionism on the global economy; third, RCEP covers economies at different stages of development, and the development of member states The potential is huge and can complement each other's advantages; fourth, RCEP has explored many innovative systems, including cumulative rules of origin, etc., which can provide a new model for countries at different development stages to carry out cooperation and global economic and trade cooperation; fifth, RCEP has resolved a series of disputes It can also provide an important reference for the global governance system.
"Given the diversity of economic development in the Asian region, RCEP still has room for further improvement." Liu Junhong believes that, on the one hand, compared with the "Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership", the level of trade and investment liberalization needs to be further improved. Tariff barriers need to be further reduced; on the other hand, member states need to keep up with the trend of technological innovation and industrial progress, such as digital transformation and green energy transformation, formulate new trade liberalization rules through negotiations, and adjust the direction of regional economic cooperation in a timely manner. In addition, how to enable members of developing countries to better participate in regional production networks through system improvement, especially to promote economic development through complex value chain trade is a topic that needs continuous research.
Gao Lingyun believes that the upgrading of RCEP can start from the following aspects: First, increase transparency, not only to let RCEP member countries understand the rules of the agreement, but also to let economies outside RCEP understand RCEP's preferential trade policies. The second is to improve the consultation and communication mechanism. On the one hand, as the impact of the epidemic gradually subsides, increase offline business promotion activities to further enhance the influence of RCEP; new rules. The third is to improve the quality of the mechanism, speed up the implementation and upgrade negotiations in due course, and dynamically adjust and improve the existing system provisions according to the actual situation. The fourth is to use appropriate methods to expand the scope. In the face of applications from some countries, RCEP member countries need to discuss the procedures for including new members, and finally find a suitable method.
