Editorial of the “World”. Donald Trump has still not recognized his electoral defeat, but, on the world stage, the wheel turns and it turns in the opposite direction of the dynamic he wanted to launch. The important free trade agreement signed on Sunday November 15 by fifteen Asia-Pacific countries, including China, is a perfect counterpoint to another regional agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), including the United States. United withdrew in January 2017, upon Mr. Trump’s arrival at the White House.
Beijing hailed the new agreement, called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), as a “Victory of multilateralism and free trade” ; the newspaper responsible for transcribing the official thought of Chinese leadership for the outside world, the Global Times, has multiplied the articles on the inevitable embarrassment of the United States, entangled in their “Unilateralism”. While defending themselves from seeing the RCEP as a stone in the American garden, these comments clearly reflect Beijing’s satisfaction with this advance in regional economic integration in Asia.
It is indeed a step forward. With the 15 signatory countries – the ten member states of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand -, the he agreement covers roughly a third of the planet’s population and a third of global production. It makes this Asian free trade area the largest in the world, comparable to those in North America or the European Union. It is remarkable in another respect: it is the first trade agreement that links the three economic heavyweights of the region, China, Japan and South Korea.
Will China want to take the lead?
The culmination of eight years of negotiations, the RCEP is not, however, a Chinese initiative. It is Asean which is at the origin, anxious to open the very diverse economies and of unequal power of the ten countries which compose it (Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia, Philippines , Thailand) over the rest of the Asia-Pacific region. Less ambitious than the initial US TPP project, it does not cover agriculture and only partially services. It also doesn’t include the region’s other heavyweight, India, which withdrew from negotiations in November 2019.
But the big question hanging over the future of this free trade agreement, which has yet to be ratified by each country, is what role China will want to play in it. Will it allow Asean to remain faithful to its original motivations, or will it want to take control of a commercial area that it will have little difficulty in dominating with all its weight? It was precisely this concern that made New Delhi change its mind.
Signed in February 2016, at the end of the Obama administration, the TPP was American-inspired and aimed to integrate the economies of North America and Asia-Pacific, but excluded China. Following the withdrawal of the United States, it was transformed into a “Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership”, concluded in 2018 by eleven countries, seven of which are also signatories of the new agreement, notably Australia and Japan.
This new chapter in world trade is a first challenge for the future Biden administration. It also puts into perspective the ambitions of the Indo-Pacific strategy forged by the United States, Japan, India and Australia, supported by France and Germany, to counter Chinese expansionism.
