China continues building relationships and doing deals, that should continue to push their overall GDP growth and wealth, and in particular build their Middle Class growth and wealth setting them up to emerge as the largest economic power in the world.

IMO, it is this perceived loss of status as the Worlds sole super power, and the near inevitability that not only will China pass the US in that regard, but they will likely dwarf the US eventually that drove the behind the scenes US (GOP) desire to tackle China now and try to slow them down.

I am not getting into whether there are any merits, or not, for the US grievances (there are). I hope to leave that to other threads and discussions. What I am saying here is think it is the fear of the loss of Power that drove the actions and if not for that, those gripes would have not resulted in this aggressive action.


The US aggressive action was, imo, an attempt to try and slow CHina's assent to the top. I don't think it will work. I think China will march on and soon be the pre-eminant world power and likely hold that spot for longer than the US has held it currently.

The only chance the West has to counter it is a near unified EU, US counter force.

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Asia-Pacific countries sign one of the largest free trade deals in history

© REUTERS

November 15, 2020 5:04 am by Robin Harding in Tokyo


The leaders of 13 countries have signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a pan-Asian trade agreement, after a decade of negotiations.

The pact covers about a third of global economic output and marks a big step for the economic integration of the region. Here are five things that explain one of the biggest trade deals in history.

What is the RCEP?
The RCEP is one of the world’s biggest free trade deals. It takes most of the existing agreements signed by the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — and combines them into a single multilateral pact with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.


By some measures, this is the largest free trade agreement in history,” said Peter Petri, professor of international finance at Brandeis University. “About 30 per cent of the world’s people are covered.”

The deal would have been even larger but India withdrew from the talks in 2019 and has so far refused to come back.

According to estimates by Prof Petri and Michael Plummer, a professor of international economics at Johns Hopkins University, RCEP will add $186bn to the size of the global economy and 0.2 per cent to the gross domestic product of its members.

Japan and South Korea are among the biggest winners but the benefit of cheaper goods will spread as far as Europe and the US.

What is in the deal?
The agreement has all the usual chapters of a free trade deal — tariffs, customs administration, sanitary measures, services, investment and others — but two elements are particularly significant.

The first is rules of origin, the criteria that determine where a product was made. All of Asean’s trade agreements have different rules of origin so, for example, if a company in Indonesia makes a bicycle it might be eligible under a free trade deal with Japan but would need different components to be eligible under a deal with South Korea.

RCEP will sweep all of that away. “When you manufacture a product for RCEP it works for all 15 countries. And there’s only one piece of paper that you need,” said Deborah Elms, executive director of the Asian Trade Centre consultancy in Singapore.

The second crucial factor is that it marks the first free trade deal between China, Japan and South Korea. Although RCEP is a fairly shallow agreement, this is still a big step. “RCEP allows them to accomplish something that would have been very difficult politically if they’d done it only among themselves,” said Prof Petri.

What is left out?
Unlike the overlapping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, the RCEP is relatively unambitious, eliminating 90 per cent of tariffs compared with almost 100 per cent in TPP. Agriculture is largely absent and the coverage of services is mixed. RCEP does relatively little to set common standards for products.

“The critical point about RCEP is that the region is enormously diverse. There are big countries and small countries, rich countries and poor countries,” said Prof Petri. “The rules have essentially accommodated all of these diverging interests.”

Ms Elms said the ecommerce chapter was a particular disappointment. The 15 countries were unable to agree any rules on cross-border data flows or a customs moratorium on data transmission.

The biggest absence, however, is India. As a huge economy with relatively few free trade agreements, Indian participation could have led to a dramatic increase in commerce. But New Delhi feared its manufacturers would be swamped by cheap Chinese competition.

Nonetheless, the agreement is expected to include provisions should India choose to join.

What does it mean for China and the US?
A common criticism of RCEP is the dominant size of China within it — a fear that became much stronger when India pulled out. The deal gives China an important voice in setting standards for regional trade and if Beijing uses that power collaboratively, its soft power will grow. “It’s potentially very good for China,” said Prof Petri.

Ms Elms said China’s sheer scale would make it an important player within the deal. “RCEP has never been China-led or China-driven. This was Asean’s agreement,” she said. “But once the agreement takes effect it will be hard for Asean to stay in the driver’s seat.”

The US now sits outside both the main trading groups in Asia after President Donald Trump withdrew from the TPP. That means neither the EU nor the US — the world’s traditional trade superpowers — will have any voice when Asia sets its trading rules.

What happens next?
It will take some time to ratify RCEP and even longer for some of the tariff provisions to come into effect. But RCEP is likely to shape the future of trade in Asia. “Asean agreements can be improved over time,” said Prof Petri. “The process is often slow but this is not the end.”

Now that they have done it in the context of RCEP, one of the most significant effects may be to accelerate talks on a China-Japan-South Korea free trade agreement. Given all three are manufacturing and technology powerhouses, that would be a big development for global commerce.

But the greatest consequence may be taking the first step towards Asia’s emergence as a coherent trading zone, like Europe or North America. “Asia is integrated but it’s for the purpose of delivering goods to other markets,” said Ms Elms. “RCEP changes that.

Well if it's free trade it must be good and not neo-imperialism.

Also China is involved in many infrastructure projects giving countries free infrastructure for more control.

While this goes on America continues to fight amoung itself

You think ASEAN is an empire?

Yeah! Busy fighting itself. While pumping even more money into it. What's really happening is unimportant so it seems. All that is important is if trump farted or has toilet paper stuck to his shoes.

If you want to call it something like that then that's fine-- although it isn't really germane to my post.
I do think it's preferred that America fight itself though as opposed to fighting the rest of the world. Probably better that way.

The "New Silk Road" project is one of the biggest foreign policy programs to ever have been enacted, and it has the potential to change international politics and trade forever.

It says a lot about the "bubble" we live in, that it isn't featured more prominently in the news. Technology might have changed the world, but control over and access to trade routes is still a critical factor for any economy.

Yup,

- control of trade via the New Silk Road and China's dominance of it

- Contributing to wealth building in partner countries all the while levering them up with massive debt owed to China and thus making them more and more likely to support Chinese interests abroad

- Providing the next levels of digital infrastructure throughout those partnerships and making it harder for US and other interests to compete due to the lack of leverage

- A growing Military force with a GDP that will make it possible to dominate US spending without even having to over burden GDP as the US spending does


Rome does not have to fall for China to surpass it. It will happen regardless. And that is what is driving the US fight. The desire to remain #1 on the world stage. Something you can paint a pretty straight line to them losing.

Oh, well, I do think lowering tariffs is good policy, so I agree that in signing this trade deal China is improving their economic policy, as are the other signatories.

Also, I'll point out that TPP is so neo-imperialist that after Trump pulled the US out of it all the other countries went ahead with it anyway.

THe TPP was supposed to combat China's dominance and instead the USA got replaced with China

Sadly Trump had the right message about China and Infrastructure but never delivered on either

I wonder if the opinion here is that Trump wasn't "tough enough" on China? It would seem some of the nominal liberals might think that which is expected/unexpected.
And fwiw I'm not too interested in getting into any sort of "free trade" discussion. Although I think it should be sort of obvious that trade deals are set up to benefit MNCs/ruling classes and not the people-- regardless of any trickle down effects and that is the only point I wanted to make. No doubt you see it quite differently. And I doubt that the US pulling out of the TPP changes its fundamental character in this regard.

Yeah China are going for world domination with their ONE overseas military base while the USA have around 800 in 70-80 countries. It does look inevitable though and the world should be worried how the USA will react when they are no longer number 1.

Agreed China will likely be the pre-eminent world power, like USA was for c70 years, the UK for c100 years, and others in the past. There is nothing really bad with losing the pre-eminence though. The UK (previously) adapted and joined a strong European & American alliance via the EU and NATO keeping it relevant. From the standard Brits perspective we've carried on getting richer & better well-off, albeit, not as fast as our capitalist leaders.

The issue will be if the US political and economic machine starts lashing out at China and can't win (like us Brits & the French did over the Suez Canal.) Will a slap down from China be as damaging as the Americans was? Will Americans accept a slap-down?

Somewhere he says China has poured more concrete in the last 5 years than the US in 70 years, or something along those lines. It's crazy if you think how many people they have. They don't give a f about the environment.
We in Germany ship apples and tomatoes now from China. Apples!! Most apple juices now have apple concentrates so do the tomatoe sauces. Which are harvested the hell out of the grounds they grow it in. They surely don't give a f about the environment. (As dont we when we ship them)

China is not part of the CPTPP. But you are right countries wanted to tie US foreign policy more closely to the Asia Pacific to combat local Chinese hegemony.

Trump had the right message on most issues, the problem is just that he also had the wrong message those issues as well.

I think you have to accept a slap down from your backer if you are massively in the mark up (in debt).

Gee, you can just ask me my opinion. I oppose Trump's trade war with China, always have. I'm not interested in drumming up a new Cold War with the CCP. That being said, I think relative American decline is inevitable, and on net a good thing, but that the CCP is taking advantage of that decline to harass its neighbors and try to acquire more territory or power. It is also pursuing what it perceives as its historical rights as local big kahuna and suzerain over some of these neighbors. Also, because its government doesn't use elections to generate legitimacy, it uses many repressive tactics locally and around the world, including locking up large swathes of entire ethnic/religious groups.

That's fine, we have different priors, but I wouldn't describe a trade deal as neo-imperialist if the other countries agree to it on their own in the absence of the US as well. That's a useful natural experiment.

I do think that if China does ascend to the biggest or sole world power, they will abuse that power more than the US or Britain did prior.

I am sure we could have lots of debates on how to measure that and what constitutes abuse but i just think a CHina, without checks and balances, is far more willing to simply militarily run over any opposition when it comes to things like Territory Claims or other disputes.

The US and EU combined could counter any threat a growing CHina would pose for decades more.

The number of democratic leaders toppled by America, and nations run roughshod by the Brits (see India) show that all in power do awful things. I don't doubt China will too. But its the same story as it ever was.

China will be checked and balanced by the rest of the world. The EU, Canada, America et. al. wont fade in to the night. I have no doubt that they have the natural resources, commercial capital, wealth, populations and geography to stay safe and powerful.

China will be the most powerful globally and regionally, but, India is right next door and thoroughly against China. They have a population, armed forces and economy to hold their own regionally. Brazil and Indonesia are sleeping giants in their respective regions. South Korea and Japan are self sufficient powerhouses at Chinas door (albeit reliant on the US for safety.)

I just dont think its as easy as it was in the Cold War with two sides facing off on each other. There are many global superpowers, many regions and many countries who can **** each other up. China will be the global superpower to outshine the rest for a while. But i don't think its all that bad as you make it out to be

Like i said in the OP, I think we can spend hours defining 'transgressions' by all sides but I still think China is worse.

I have no doubt that left unchecked China's golags and work camps would be filled with any one who dissented. And dissent would be everything from opposing them verbally to trying to stop them physically or militarily.

They see their goals being achieved with ruthless ends as normal. The hand ringing in the West may be largely symbolic but at least some methods to stand up and fight back do exist.

The new 15 member zone representing ~30% of the worlds population.

Just out of UK interest, there's been formal moves by the UK to join the CPTPP. Also Huawei are already making noises about a UK rethink now trump has been beaten

Unrelated. I expect the USA to react very badly to the reality of China#1 as it approaches. it may have started to do so but we aint seen nothing yet.

But if you are honest, wouldn't this be your criticism of ANY trade policy, no matter where it fell on the spectrum?

In other words, I feel like your basic position is "Governments establish trade policies. QED."

Fair enough. I guess my question is over "fighting back". I guess I think we should sort the problems in our own back yard first.

I don't know the full read up on CPTPP but, the good things about the EU were the level playing field it tried to enforce in state intervention. It did it badly, and the UK behaved stupidly within these constraints, but, it did try.

I'd only really support the CPTPP if it allowed us to intervene in our companies as much as the Chinese government do.