General

Over the past year, in the context of the changing international situation and the continuing downturn of the global economy, RCEP has fully released the mechanism dividend, effectively deepened the economic links between Asian economies, effectively boosted the confidence in Asian regional trade and investment, further strengthened the resilience of the intra-regional industry chain and supply chain, and injected new impetus into the construction of a unified intra-regional market and the realization of global prosperity and development.

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, in the context of the changing international situation and the continuing downturn of the global economy, RCEP has fully released the mechanism dividend, effectively deepened the economic links between Asian economies, effectively boosted the confidence in Asian regional trade and investment, further strengthened the resilience of the intra-regional industry chain and supply chain, and injected new impetus into the construction of a unified intra-regional market and the realization of global prosperity and development. Facing the future, RCEP member countries will fully release 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 enter into force for 10 countries including Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. It will enter into force for South Korea on February 1, Malaysia on March 18, and Myanmar on May 1. At present, the number of effective members among the 15 signatory member states has reached 13. Since the entry into force of the RCEP, member countries have held joint meetings in many fields to negotiate and promote the implementation of the agreement. At the same time, the RCEP Industrial Cooperation Committee was established to promote international trade, investment and industrial cooperation.

It is noteworthy that RCEP has 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, Japan and South Korea and Japan was 20.3 trillion yen and 5.5 trillion yen respectively, up 10.6% and 25.5% from the same period in 2021. In addition, under the framework of RCEP, China, Japan and South Korea have carried out international trade cooperation in machinery manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, optoelectronic equipment manufacturing and other fields, laying a foundation for the regional value chain cooperation of the three countries in high-end manufacturing industries such as new technology and new energy.

"The RCEP has brought huge economic benefits and higher social welfare level to the member countries since its official entry into force one year ago." Gao Lingyun, director of the International Investment Research Office of the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that in the field of trade, the 13 member countries that have been approved have successively adopted tariff reduction measures of different degrees, which has promoted the growth of trade scale between each other; In the field of investment, the agreement introduced issues such as investment promotion, investment protection, investment facilitation and liberalization, and all members committed to adopting the negative list method to enhance the attractiveness of investment and the protection of intellectual property rights; In the field of industrial chain supply chain, RCEP not only expands the regional network of the original industrial chain supply chain, but also further strengthens the stickiness and stability of the industrial chain supply chain; In terms of social welfare level, under the condition of equal expenditure, RCEP member countries can obtain consumer goods that are more in line with their own needs, greatly improving the welfare level of the people of the member countries.

"The formal entry into force of RCEP plays an important role in maintaining the multilateral trading system and promoting regional economic cooperation. One year after its official entry into force, RCEP has not only promoted the continuous adjustment and expansion of the overall trade structure between member countries, but also further expanded the overall scale of RCEP's trade outside the region. For example, the container traffic volume from East Asian ports to North America has reached a record high, which is a measure.

China keeps its promise and makes a lot of contributions

"RCEP is not only a free trade agreement with the largest population and largest economic and trade scale in the world, but also a comprehensive, modern, high-quality and mutually beneficial free trade agreement." Gao Lingyun believes that the official entry into force of RCEP is the result of the joint efforts of member countries, reflecting comprehensiveness, progressiveness and inclusiveness.

——RCEP covers a wide range of areas. Its main section includes not only trade and investment facilitation and related opening commitments in traditional areas such as trade in goods, trade in services and investment, but also a large number of new trade rules involving post-border issues such as intellectual property rights, e-commerce, competition policy, government procurement, etc.

——RCEP explores a series of high-standard economic and trade rules. In terms of intellectual property rights, there are 83 articles, including not only trademarks, patents, copyrights, but also transparency, anti-unfair competition, technical assistance and other topics. In the field of trade in services, RCEP members promised to realize the negative list within six years after the agreement came into force. The level of openness is not only higher than that of the WTO, but also higher than the existing "ASEAN+1" free trade agreement. In terms of e-commerce rules, RCEP is the multilateral e-commerce rule with the widest scope and the largest number of members reached in the Asia-Pacific region, and is also the e-commerce agreement with the highest level of participation by China at present.

——RCEP fully demonstrates inclusiveness. In full consideration of the different development levels and economic needs of the member countries, the less developed member countries are given a certain transition period or exception clauses. RCEP has set up a transition period of market opening for about 20 years, gradually realizing the zero tariff of 90% of the imported products, and providing a transition period of domestic legislation and improving the regulatory system for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and other member countries.

"RCEP strives to find a balance between high standards and diversity, creating opportunities for the transfer and reconstruction of the supply chain of the regional industrial chain." Liu Junhong said that RCEP is a multilateral cooperation framework that fully takes into account diversity. By unifying tariff commitments, rules of origin, trade and investment facilitation and other trade rules, RCEP has integrated the "fragmented" economic and trade institutional arrangements in East Asia to the greatest extent, that is, 27 trade arrangements and 44 investment agreements signed and implemented by 15 member countries. In the face of different interests of member countries, RCEP has set up some progressive institutional arrangements, that is, each member country can arrange the tax reduction range and negative list process according to its own situation. In addition, RCEP has stipulated some special and differential treatment exemption clauses in the dispute settlement, reflecting the spirit of fairness, justice, inclusiveness and mutual benefit.

China has always been an important participant and active promoter of RCEP. Over the past year, in order to successfully implement the RCEP, six departments including the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China have jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on the High-Quality Implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, implemented the commitments on the opening of service trade and the negative list of investment in the agreement, and promoted enterprises to better use the policy dividend. From July to August 2022, the RCEP Industrial Cooperation Committee and more than 10 national business associations in China signed the Memorandum of Strategic Cooperation, agreeing to jointly promote the new development of cooperation between China and other member countries of the RCEP in relevant industries.

"In the past year, China has kept its promise and made a lot of contributions to the RCEP." Gao Lingyun said, first, on the first day of the official entry into force of the RCEP, China began to fully implement the tariff concessions; The second is to assist other member countries to familiarize themselves with the preferential policies and facilitation rules in the agreement and share the development opportunities of the Chinese market through the multilateral cooperation platform; Third, it helped the countries with relatively backward development stage in member countries to carry out development capacity building and provided more technical and financial support; Fourth, we will continue to promote the improvement and upgrading of RCEP through institutional opening.

It is expected to project dividends to the world

Gu Qingyang, associate professor of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said that in the context of the world economic difficulties, RCEP has injected strong growth momentum into emerging markets. The latest report of the Asian Development Bank raised the expectation of economic growth in Southeast Asia in 2022 from 5.1% to 5.5%, reflecting to some extent the expectation of RCEP to boost the economy of ASEAN countries.

Peter Dresdale, 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 gap in the free trade agreement, boosting regional trade and strengthening regional supply chain, and has the potential to project the dividends of international trade in Asia to the world as a platform.

"The formal entry into force of the RCEP has brought opportunities for the development of the world economy full of conflicts, problems and challenges," Gao Lingyun said. First, the formal entry into force of the RCEP has injected confidence in free trade, multilateralism and regional economic integration; Second, RCEP has released tangible dividends, provided stability and certainty for the regional economy and the world economy, and alleviated the impact of unilateralism and trade protectionism on the global economy; Third, RCEP covers economies at different stages of development, and member countries have great potential for international trade development, which can complement each other's advantages; Fourth, RCEP has explored many innovative systems, including rules of origin accumulation, which can provide a new model for countries at different stages of development to carry out cooperation and global economic and trade cooperation; Fifth, RCEP's solutions to a series of disputes can also provide an important reference for the global governance system.

"Given the diversity of economic development in Asia, there is still room for further improvement of RCEP." Liu Junhong believes that, on the one hand, compared with the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the level of international trade and investment liberalization needs to be further improved, and internal tariff barriers need to be further reduced; On the other hand, member countries need to follow the trend of technological innovation and industrial progress, such as digital transformation and green energy transformation, and formulate new trade liberalization rules through negotiation, so as to adjust the direction of regional economic cooperation in a timely manner. In addition, how to improve the system so that the majority of developing country members can better participate in regional production networks, especially to promote economic development through complex value chain trade, is a subject that needs continuous research.

Gao Lingyun believes that the improvement and upgrading of RCEP can be carried out from the following aspects: first, to increase transparency, not only to let RCEP member countries understand the rules of the agreement, but also to let economies outside of RCEP understand the preferential trade policies of RCEP. The second is to improve the consultation and communication mechanism. On the one hand, as the impact of the epidemic fades away, offline business promotion activities will be increased to further enhance the influence of RCEP; On the other hand, increase the coverage of RCEP rules and new rules in the field of service trade and digital economy. The third is to improve the quality of the mechanism, accelerate the implementation and upgrading of negotiations in due time, and dynamically adjust and improve the existing system provisions according to the actual situation. The fourth is to expand the scope in an appropriate way. In the face of the accession application of some countries, RCEP member countries need to discuss the procedures for the inclusion of new members and finally find an appropriate way.