News Agencies – After eight years of talks, China and 14 different nations from Japan to New Zealand to Myanmar on Sunday formally signed one of many world’s largest regional free commerce agreements, a pact designed by Beijing partly as a counterweight to American affect within the area.
First proposed in 2012, the deal was sealed on the sidelines of the Asean annual summit as leaders push to get their pandemic-hit economies back on track.
“I am happy that after eight years of complex discussions, today we officially end RCEP negotiations,” Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said ahead of the virtual signing, South China Morning Post reports.
RCEP will represent the world’s largest trade pact in gross domestic product (GDP) terms. Supporters of the trade pact, which covers 2.2 billion people with a combined GDP of $26.2 trillion, said it will bolster pandemic-weakened economies by reducing tariffs, strengthening supply chains with common rules of origin, and codifying new e-commerce rules.
The RCEP “solidifies China’s broader regional geopolitical ambitions around the Belt and Road initiative”, said Alexander Capri, a trade expert at the National University of Singapore Business School, referring to Beijing’s signature investment project that envisions Chinese infrastructure and influence spanning the globe.
“It’s sort of a complementary element.”
