TY - JOUR
T1 - The Economic Cooperation Potential of East Asia’s RCEP Agreement
AU - Armstrong, Shiro
AU - Drysdale, Peter
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - East Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force in
2022 as the world’s largest free trade agreement. RCEP was concluded, signed and
brought into force in the face of major international uncertainty and is a significant boost
to the global trading system. RCEP brings Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New
Zealand into the same agreement with the ten member ASEAN group at its centre. It
keeps markets open and updates trade and investment rules in East Asia, a major centre
of global economic activity, at a time of rising protectionism when the WTO itself is
under threat. The agreement builds on ASEAN’s free trade agreements and strengthens
ASEAN centrality. One of the pillars of RCEP is an economic cooperation agenda which
has its antecedents in ASEAN’s approach to bringing along its least developed members
and builds on the experience of capacity building in APEC and technical cooperation
under the ASEAN Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. There is an opportunity
to create a framework that facilitates deeper economic cooperation that involves
experience-sharing, extending RCEP’s rules and membership at the same time as
strengthening political cooperation. The paper suggests some areas that might be best
suited to cooperation — that is confidence and trust building instead of or before
negotiation — and discusses how non-members may be engaged and the membership
expanded. Options such as multilateralising provisions and becoming a platform for
policy convergence and coordinating unilateral reforms are canvassed.
AB - East Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force in
2022 as the world’s largest free trade agreement. RCEP was concluded, signed and
brought into force in the face of major international uncertainty and is a significant boost
to the global trading system. RCEP brings Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New
Zealand into the same agreement with the ten member ASEAN group at its centre. It
keeps markets open and updates trade and investment rules in East Asia, a major centre
of global economic activity, at a time of rising protectionism when the WTO itself is
under threat. The agreement builds on ASEAN’s free trade agreements and strengthens
ASEAN centrality. One of the pillars of RCEP is an economic cooperation agenda which
has its antecedents in ASEAN’s approach to bringing along its least developed members
and builds on the experience of capacity building in APEC and technical cooperation
under the ASEAN Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. There is an opportunity
to create a framework that facilitates deeper economic cooperation that involves
experience-sharing, extending RCEP’s rules and membership at the same time as
strengthening political cooperation. The paper suggests some areas that might be best
suited to cooperation — that is confidence and trust building instead of or before
negotiation — and discusses how non-members may be engaged and the membership
expanded. Options such as multilateralising provisions and becoming a platform for
policy convergence and coordinating unilateral reforms are canvassed.
U2 - 10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2022.26.1.403
DO - 10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2022.26.1.403
M3 - Article
VL - 26
SP - 3
EP - 25
JO - East Asian Economic Review
JF - East Asian Economic Review
IS - 1
ER -