Recently, The Ministry of Commerce of China stated that since September last year, China formally proposed to join the "Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement" (CPTPP), there have been positive reactions at home and abroad. China is currently actively consulting and communicating with member states in accordance with relevant procedures.
China has conducted a comprehensive evaluation and in-depth study of the agreement copy, and sorted out the reform measures needed to be taken to join the CPTPP and relevant laws.
Speaker of the Ministry of Commerce Shu Jueting said that China is willing to continue to deepen reforms, strive to meet the CPTPP rules and standards, make high-level open commitments beyond existing contractual practices in the field of market access, actively promote regional economic integration and trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and contribute to promoting global economic recovery.
From last year's confirmation to join this "new group" and now it has officially started to go through the procedures. It is only a matter of time before China becomes a CPTPP partner country. Although countries have not reached a complete consensus on China's joining, most of them have a positive attitude, especially Singapore.
Singapore As the chairman of the CPTPP this year, the country's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong expressed support, He believes that China's joining is a "good thing" for CPTPP members. is not only a good thing, but for CPTPP, which currently has a broad scope of cooperation, but lacks "supporting countries" and is actually difficult to play a real role, China's joining is even more of a "lucky". The predecessor of
CPTPP is the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) established by former US President Observer Officially, wooing countries in Pacific Rim. It seems to be a Pacific Rim economic cooperation, with a "small APEC" attitude, but in fact, the United States continues to expand its own economic hegemony within the framework of the organization.
Moreover, the United States has clearly used TPP to constrain and curb China. On the one hand, it promotes regional trade and investment monitoring with China, and on the other hand, it uses zero tariffs , free trade and other means to promote the transfer of investment enterprises in China to downstream countries such as ASEAN and Latin America.
and After Trump came to power, he asked the United States to be given priority because of his unique "MAGA" policy. The changeable and free trade and investment environment emphasized by the TPP undoubtedly have huge pressure on domestic industries in the United States. Therefore, Trump announced the United States to withdraw before the TPP officially took effect.
As soon as the United States retreated, other countries also retreated one after another. This put Japan, which was still waiting to use TPP to take advantage of tariff dividends, expand exports and overseas investment, and Japan, which was unwilling to give up this opportunity, ran back and forth. eventually led to the signing of an agreement by the original 11 countries of TPP, and promoted the establishment of a "new group" - CPTPP based on the framework of TPP.
At the same time, the " Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement " (RCEP) led by ASEAN actively promoted and flourished. The organization is more in line with the interests of Western Pacific countries and covers almost all major economies in Western Pacific countries and regions, and also overlaps with CPTPP in terms of function.
However, with the profound changes in the international situation, the Sino-US game has reached a critical moment. The United States is taking more and more open and secret arrows to promote the global reduction of economic dependence on China and cut off China's global trade chain. Trump withdrew from the TPP, but now the Democratic Party has regained power and is "stumbling" to China in multiple areas of economy, trade and investment.
Although the Biden administration has repeatedly denied the claim that it would return to CPTPP, the United States has not given up its attempt to establish a small circle to isolate China. In order to win over more allies, it has even set up trade barriers , the United States has also created a " Indo-Pacific Economic Framework " (IPEF).
On the other hand, in addition to China, South Korea and the United Kingdom have applied to join the CPTPP, and the United Kingdom has basically approved the joining. The joining of these two major economies gives CPTPP greater potential for economic and trade promotion and broader and more in-depth cooperation space.
Under this situation, China, which is unique in the world, actively joins the CPTPP, which can not only play a better economic and trade role in the organization, but also use its wide-area framework to promote trade and investment between us and countries in the Americas and Oceania.
even promotes the collaborative operation of RCEP and CPTPP, forming a Pacific Economic Cooperation Organization without the United States, and better avoiding the United States' economic suppression of China under the framework of Asia-Pacific economic cooperation.
China is the largest trading partner of ASEAN, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Its economic importance and economic influence on Asia-Pacific region have actually surpassed the United States. China also has the ever-developing "Belt and Road" initiative. The three major Asia-Europe continental bridges are all based on China and are driving more and more landlocked Asian countries to develop and connect Asia-Europe trade. This situation determines that China's joining is of decisive significance to the strong development of CPTPP.
