General

The effective implementation of RCEP has brought new opportunities to Chongqing, which is actively building an inland open highland. The data shows that from January to October last year, Chongqing's international trade import and export to other RCEP member countries reached 214.51 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5%. In the first half of 2022, Chongqing has invested 58 projects in ASEAN countries, with actual investment exceeding 530 million dollars. Under this opportunity, the pace of "going out" of Chongqing enterprises is also accelerating. Li Jing, vice president of Chongqing Technology and Business University, said that RCEP will further promote the integration of Chinese enterprises with international economic and trade rules and gradually improve their own internationalization strategy. The dividend of investment policy brought by RCEP and the optimization of investment policy in Southeast Asian countries to adapt to RCEP rules have a positive impact on the development of enterprises' foreign business. RCEP has raised the expectation of Chongqing enterprises to invest in ASEAN from the perspective of system guarantee.

Recently, the Research Report on Chongqing Enterprises' RCEP National Investment (hereinafter referred to as the Report) jointly released by the Southeast Asia Research Center of Chongqing Industrial and Commercial University, the Economic Research Center on the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Research Center of Chengdu Chongqing Double City Economic Circle jointly surveyed 147 Chongqing enterprises, including 103 overseas invested enterprises, 91 Southeast Asian invested enterprises, and 12 non Southeast Asian invested enterprises; 44 overseas investment enterprises have not been launched yet.

The Report shows that RCEP enables enterprises to invest in the ASEAN market, which is expected to further expand the international trade market. The opening level of RCEP service trade and investment is higher than the existing ASEAN "10+1" free trade agreement, which will further eliminate the existing access restrictions and investment barriers of ASEAN countries. Direct investment of enterprises in ASEAN is expected to expand from manufacturing, wholesale and retail, and construction to services. At the same time, most ASEAN member countries are developing countries with labor cost advantages. RCEP will accelerate the transfer of enterprises to the low-end industrial chain in Southeast Asia. Enterprises that have not invested in Southeast Asia said that they will take investing in ASEAN as an important part of their internationalization strategy in the future.

Li Jing believes that for China, the key to promoting high-quality economic development is to achieve industrial transformation and upgrading. Under the framework of RCEP, manufacturing enterprises should relocate the ASEAN market. By taking advantage of the opportunities and advantages of RCEP and setting up regional headquarters in Southeast Asia, it is conducive to improving the diversification and internationalization level of China's international trade enterprises.

According to the Report, RCEP has also brought some challenges to enterprises' "going global". 62.5% of Chongqing enterprises investing in Southeast Asia believe that RCEP will make talent competition more intense and increase enterprise costs; 56.94% of enterprises said that the promotion of RCEP would lead to further transparency and convergence of raw material costs, more intense competition between local enterprises and foreign enterprises, and more weakening of price advantages; 38.89% of enterprises believe that RCEP will bring about the restructuring of the industrial chain, and the upstream and downstream industrial chains of enterprises will face challenges.

According to the Report, Chongqing enterprises investing in RCEP member countries may also face problems such as less friendly business environment, less ideal industrial conditions, mismatched talent supply and demand, and cultural communication to be strengthened. For example, in terms of industrial conditions, during the survey, more than half (55.56%) of enterprises believed that the development status of the industrial parks where they invested in Southeast Asia was average and needed to be improved.

On the basis of investigation and understanding of enterprise demands, Li Jing suggested that efforts should be made from the following three aspects to promote Chongqing international trade enterprises to better connect with RCEP and improve their ability to "go global":

First, strengthen top-level design, and actively do a good job of government docking and industry tracking. Give play to the existing cooperation mechanisms such as the bilateral joint economic and trade commission, the economic and trade cooperation working group, the infrastructure cooperation working group, and the financial cooperation working group; Establish a working mechanism for dialogue on investment between the government and the investment authorities of Southeast Asian countries, and actively implement investment cooperation with Southeast Asian countries; Give play to the coordination role of industry business associations, deeply study the current situation and trend of the industry development in Southeast Asia, and track changes in relevant policies of the industry.

The second is to respond to the demands of enterprises and optimize overseas investment services. During the survey, 66.77% of enterprises hoped that the government would increase financial support for "going global" enterprises and broaden cross-border investment and financing channels of RMB; 58.54% of enterprises hope to simplify the management of foreign investment approval and filing, and relax the foreign exchange management of foreign investment; 48.61% of enterprises hope to provide export insurance services; 47.22% of enterprises hope that the government can carry out various forms of economic and trade activities to provide a platform for enterprises' foreign investment and cooperation.

Third, optimize the organization and operation, and give full play to the role of the new land and sea channel in the west. All enterprises participating in the survey said that the effective implementation of RCEP could better play the role of the new land sea channel in the west. Therefore, we should strengthen the infrastructure construction, improve the trunk line transportation capacity, and accelerate the railway construction; Improve the road transport network, further expand the coverage of the road network, and effectively expand the radiation range of the main channel; The transportation enterprises participating in the operation of the logistics line of the new land and sea channel in the west will be given financial subsidies to purchase GPS positioning equipment, energy-saving and environment-friendly cold chain transport vehicles, full range temperature and humidity monitoring equipment, cold storage and thermal insulation boxes, intermodal refrigerated containers, standard pallets and other equipment; Build a cooperation platform, support cross-border enterprises with online intelligent matchmaking platform, and help ASEAN countries and hundreds of domestic enterprises achieve accurate matching of cross-border needs; Breaking the time zone and geographical boundaries, China Unicom has multi-channel data sources to intelligently match and connect massive cross-border transaction information, help enterprises along the channel solve the problem of information asymmetry, and reduce the cost of international trade transactions.