By Aurelia George Mulgan
China’s push into the South China Sea is behind the growing awareness of the strategic value of the TPP.
In the wake of the broad agreement on the TPP reached in Atlanta on October 5, strategic competition in the Asia-Pacific has taken on two even more salient dimensions.
The first centers on competing trade models for the region. Japan wants to turn the TPP into the model for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Japan-China-South Korea FTA, while China wants these trade agreements to be modeled on the China-South Korea FTA signed in June this year, not the TPP. During the recent G20 summit meeting in Turkey, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asserted that “The economic order built by the TPP will become the preliminary draft for the regulations for the RCEP etc.’
In the wake of the Atlanta agreement and the recent APEC meeting in Manila, both Xi Jinping and Valdimir Putin have indirectly criticized the TPP as counter to their own plans for the region. China’s position was previously cautious rather than openly negative towards the trade pact, not rejecting it outright. It remains to be seen whether the Chinese authorities will seriously consider membership, with some reports suggesting that China may now be seeing the agreement in a more positive light.
Some Chinese commentators identify the TPP and RCEP as alternative and competing routes to trade liberalization and economic integration in the region. One depicted the TPP as “powerfully promoted by the United States and excluding the two major nations China and India” and RCEP as led by ASEAN and proactively promoted by China. Such comments belie the fact that the TPP is open to Chinese membership, while the RCEP is widely seen as a China-led trade agreement even though it was initiated by the 10 ASEAN members, which invited China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India – to join the negotiations.
Ultimately competition over trade agreements may determine what kind of free trade zone will prove preponderant in the Asia-Pacific as rivalry for the design of the Free Trade Agreement for the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) intensifies. Japan and the United States are explicitly pushing for the TPP to be used as the model or building block for the FTAAP, viewing the recent broad agreement on the TPP as a major step towards realizing the region-wide agreement. In the short term, trends appear to be favoring the TPP over any other FTA model, with the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea either expressing an interest in joining or seriously considering it. Abe was quoted on NHK News on November 20 as saying that “the new economic order [in the Asia Pacific] that will be established based on the TPP will become the springboard for rule formation in the FTAAP and reiterated that he would like to promote regional economic integration proactively with the TPP as the basis.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat