At the 4th Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Summit on November 15, 2020, 15 countries, including ten ASEAN countries, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, officially signed the RCEP Agreement, the world's largest free trade agreement (FTA). The signing of the agreement is an important action of the regions and countries concerned to maintain the multilateral trade system and build an open world economy. It is of landmark significance to regional economic integration and global economic stability.

Eight-year negotiations for the RCEP agreement

The negotiation was initiated by ten ASEAN countries and participated by China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India as dialogue partners, aiming to reach an FTA on a common market for 16 countries by reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers.  

The negotiation started in November 2012, covering more than 10 areas including small and medium-sized enterprises, investment, economic and technological cooperation, trade in goods and services, etc. In the Joint Leaders' Statementissued at the 3rd RCEP Summit on November 4, 2019, the leaders stated that they noted that 15 RCEP Participating Countries have concluded text-based negotiations and essentially all their market access issues and tasked legal scrubbing by them to commence. India, however, did not participate in the agreement due to significant issues.

World's largest FTA

Statistics as of 2018 showed that the 15 participating countries of the RCEP had a total population of 2.3 billion, or 30% of the world's total; and their GDP exceeded 25 trillion US dollars. Regarding the coverage area, the region will become the world's largest free trade zone (FTZ).

Multiple new trade forms

The agreement follows the trend of global trade development and includes various new trade forms such as e-commerce. The agreement covers intellectual property rights (IPR), competition policies, government procurement, small and medium-sized enterprises, etc., far more sectors than what the World Trade Organization (WTO) defined.

(Reporter: Liu Gang)