General

At a press conference on the 23rd, Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Commerce and Deputy Representative of International Trade Negotiations revealed that China has reached 19 free trade agreements and signed agreements with 26 countries and regions. Currently, China is actively considering joining the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement).

The predecessor of CPTPP was the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which was dominated by the United States and Japan, and was once established as a way to exclude China. However, after the former US President Trump took office in 2017, the first executive order signed was announcing his withdrawal from the TPP. Subsequently, Japan succeeded the United States, and after several months of negotiations with the remaining 10 countries, in January 2018, it announced the conclusion of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP), and it has frozen the 20 articles originally advocated by the United States in the current CPTPP agreement. The terms reserved room for the return of the United States.

However, more than three years have passed. Under the premise that the prospects for the return of the United States are still unclear, the CPTPP member states are the first to hear a clear signal that China will actively consider joining. When attending the 27th APEC Informal Leaders’ Meeting in Beijing on the evening of November 20, 2020, President Xi Jinping pointed out that China welcomes the completion of the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and will actively consider joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. Relationship agreement.

Wang Shouwen pointed out that the current international free trade agreements are booming. According to statistics from the World Trade Organization, there are currently more than 350 free trade agreements reached internationally, many of which are large-scale free trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Relations Agreement.

He said that since China and ASEAN reached the first free trade agreement in 2002, China's free trade agreement has made positive progress. Especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China has signed 9 free trade agreements, including 8 free trade agreements with individual countries. "While signing these nine free trade agreements, it also upgraded the previous free trade agreements, including the upgrade of the free trade agreements with ASEAN, and the free trade agreements between China and Chile, Singapore and New Zealand have all conducted upgrade negotiations. "

Wang Shouwen emphasized that the free trade agreement has a very obvious effect on China. First, the expansion of trade and investment relations between China and its free trade partners has a very significant effect on stabilizing China's basic foreign trade and foreign investment. For example, in 2012, the free trade agreement accounted for only 12.3% of China's foreign trade. By last year, the free trade agreement accounted for nearly 35% of China's total foreign trade.

Second, it has further tightened economic and trade relations with free trade partners. For example, the bilateral trade volume between China and ASEAN in 2003 was only over 78 billion U.S. dollars. Last year, the bilateral trade volume reached 685.1 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 8.7 times. "If there is no free trade agreement, the volume of trade cannot grow so much."

Third, the free trade agreement has played a very good role in China's opening up. In terms of trade in goods, China’s most-favoured-nation average tariff is 7.5%. The free trade agreement enables more than 90% of the trade between China and its free trade partners to achieve zero tariffs, and the level of tariff liberalization in goods trade is very high. In terms of service trade, the number of open investment areas is also increasing.

He pointed out that in the next stage, the existing free trade agreements, including the Singapore Free Trade Agreement and the South Korean Free Trade Agreement, should be further upgraded. At the same time, it is necessary to accelerate the pace of new free trade agreement negotiations, including the China-Japan-Korea free trade agreement negotiations, China and the GCC, as well as the free trade agreement negotiations with Israel and Norway. At the same time, China is actively considering joining the CPTPP.