Breakthrough in the negotiation of the world's largest free trade agreement

After seven years of running, regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP), the world's most populous and diverse free trade area, has finally made a breakthrough. RCEP was initiated by 10 ASEAN countries, with 16 countries including Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand participating. The negotiation started in 2013. After three leaders' meetings, 19 ministerial meetings and 28 rounds of formal negotiations, the Asia Pacific region will finally form a free trade area with zero tariff of more than 90% for goods trade. According to the experts interviewed, the achievements of the RCEP negotiation will have a positive impact on enterprises' export expansion, foreign investment attraction and foreign investment, and play an important role in forming a large regional value chain in the whole Asia Pacific region. Chinese enterprises will have more opportunities to enter Japan, South Korea and other places. More importantly, with the adjustment of regional production layout, Chinese enterprises are expected to rise to the higher end of the value chain. At present, according to the statement issued by the 3rd RCEP leaders' meeting, the substantive market access negotiations of 15 countries other than India have ended, and the negotiation team will start the review of the text, with the goal of signing the agreement in 2020. In terms of goods trade, the proportion of goods trade with zero tariff reached more than 90%. "This agreement is a high-quality free trade agreement," said Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Commerce. Generally speaking, the high-level free trade agreement is over 95%, and the RCEP goods trade is over 90%, which is much higher than the opening level of WTO countries. " Song Hong, deputy director of the world economic and Political Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Shanghai Stock Exchange: "the proportion of zero tariffs in the free trade agreements reached by RCEP is very high. Except for some agricultural products and sensitive goods, almost all manufacturing industries, including automobiles, will be open. Since China and Japan have not signed a free trade agreement before, the conclusion of RCEP will create a great opportunity for Chinese enterprises to enter Japan. " In terms of investment access, RCEP adopts the way of negative list to negotiate investment access. "This is the first list of negative investment signed by China," Chen Liang, director of Research Department of Shanghai WTO Affairs Advisory Center, said in an interview with Shanghai Securities News. "Each member country has not only made a high degree of commitment to market opening, but also will greatly improve the transparency and predictability of investment policies."