General

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

Recently, the Chongqing Enterprise RCEP National Investment Research Report (hereinafter referred to as the Report) jointly issued by the Southeast Asia Research Center of Chongqing Business University, the Yangtze River Upstream Economic Research Center, and the Chengdu-Chongqing Shuangcheng Economic Circle Research Center, surveyed 147 Chongqing enterprises, including 103 overseas investment enterprises, 91 investment enterprises in Southeast Asia, and 12 investment enterprises in non-Southeast Asia; There are 44 enterprises that have not yet invested overseas.

The Report shows that RCEP is expected to further expand the international trade market by enabling enterprises to invest in the ASEAN market. RCEP's service trade and investment opening level are higher than the existing ASEAN "10+1" free trade agreement, which will further eliminate the existing access restrictions and investment barriers of ASEAN countries. The direct investment of enterprises in ASEAN is expected to expand from manufacturing, wholesale and retail, and construction to service industry. At the same time, most ASEAN member countries are developing countries with labor cost advantages. RCEP will accelerate the transfer of enterprises to Southeast Asia's low-end industrial chain. 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, it is necessary for manufacturing enterprises to relocate the ASEAN market. By taking advantage of the opportunities and advantages of RCEP and setting up regional headquarters in Southeast Asia, it is beneficial to improve the diversification and internationalization level of China's international trade enterprises.

According to the Report, RCEP has also brought certain 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 fierce competition between local enterprises and foreign enterprises, and weaker price advantages; 38.89% of enterprises believe that RCEP will bring 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 unfriendly business environment, imperfect 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 the enterprises believed that the development status of the industrial parks where they invested in Southeast Asia was general and needed to be improved.

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

First, strengthen the top-level design and actively do a good job of government docking and industry tracking. Give full play to the existing cooperation mechanisms such as the Joint Committee on Bilateral Economic and Trade Cooperation, the Working Group on Economic and Trade Cooperation, the Working Group on Infrastructure Cooperation and the Working Group on Financial Cooperation; Establish a special dialogue mechanism between the government and the investment authorities of Southeast Asian countries, and actively implement investment cooperation with Southeast Asian countries; Give full play to the coordinating role of the trade associations, conduct in-depth research on the current situation and trend of the development of the industry in Southeast Asia, and track the changes in relevant policies of the industry.

The second is to respond to the demands of enterprises and optimize foreign investment services. During the survey, 66.77% of enterprises hoped that the government would increase financial support for "going global" enterprises and broaden the cross-border investment and financing channels of RMB; 58.54% of enterprises hope to simplify the approval and filing management of foreign investment 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 transportation capacity of trunk lines, and accelerate the railway construction; Improve the highway transportation network, further expand the coverage of the highway network, and effectively expand the radiation range of the main channel; Financial subsidies will be given to transport enterprises participating in the operation of the logistics route of the new land-sea corridor in the west, such as the purchase of GPS positioning equipment, energy-saving and environment-friendly cold chain transport vehicles, whole-process temperature and humidity monitoring equipment, cold storage and thermal insulation (thermal insulation) containers, 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 demand; Break the time zone and geographical boundaries, connect multi-channel data sources, 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.