Rcep covers 29.7% of the global population and 28.9% of GDP. At the same time, it also covers two markets with the greatest growth potential in the world, one is the China market with a population of 654.38+04 billion, and the other is the ASEAN market with a population of more than 600 million. As a modern, comprehensive, high-level and mutually beneficial agreement, RCEP Agreement consists of a preface and 20 chapters (mainly including chapters on trade in goods, rules of origin, trade remedy, service trade, investment, e-commerce and government procurement). ) and a list of commitments on trade in goods, services, investment and temporary movement of natural persons.
RCEP 15 is an upgrade of the existing "10+ 1" FTA, which will form a unified rule system in the region. There is a word called "spaghetti effect". 10 ASEAN countries and five other countries signed agreements respectively. With so many agreements, the rules of origin, the openness of investment and service trade are all different, and they are packaged together like "spaghetti". Now RCEP is upgraded collectively and unified rules, which is very convenient for the industrial and commercial circles and import and export enterprises in the region, and helps to reduce operating costs and reduce the uncertain risks of operation.
In addition, it also helps to establish supply chain and value chain in the region. In this region, it used to be one-to-one, but now everyone has become a collective region and formed a unified free trade zone, which will help to form a supply chain and a value chain in this region according to comparative advantages, and will be of great benefit to the flow of goods, technologies, services and capital in this region, including the cross-border flow of people, and form a "trade creation" effect. In this region, enterprises can participate in the value accumulation of origin, which is of great benefit to promoting mutual trade and investment in the region.
It takes time for RCEP to be approved, and it takes longer for tariff clauses to take effect. But RCEP may shape the future of Asian trade. Professor Petrie said: "ASEAN agreements can be gradually improved, which is often slow, but this is by no means the end." Now that China, Japan and South Korea have reached a free trade agreement within the framework of RCEP, the biggest impact of this incident is probably to accelerate the negotiation of free trade agreements among the three countries.
In addition to ASEAN countries, all the countries that joined later are manufacturing powers and technological powers, which will be of great significance to global trade. Asia may take this as a starting point and gradually become a well-defined trade area, just like Europe and North America, or even stronger.