South China Morning Post.
China will later this month enter talks to create an Asian free-trade
bloc covering 28 per cent of world GDP, a reaction to U.S. progress in
forming a Trans-Pacific Partnership that excludes China, South Korean
Trade Minister Taeho Bark said on Monday.
The RCEP, or Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, will be
comprised of the 10-nation ASEAN club plus six others: China, India,
Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Its launch is to be formally announced at the ASEAN summit in Phnom
Penh later this month, with a goal of reaching a deal to lower trade
barriers across the region by the end of 2015.
RCEP adds to a growing web of regional and sectoral trade
negotiations that has sprung up after a decade of talks failed to
conclude a global trade deal, the so-called Doha Round.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) championed by President Barack
Obama’s administration aims to tear down traditional trade barriers and
break ground in new areas, streamlining trade between the United States
and 10 other countries.
“We’re organising trade relations with countries other than China so
that China starts feeling more pressure about meeting basic
international standards,” Obama said in a presidential debate with
Governor Mitt Romney two weeks ago.
Bark said RCEP had grown out of a plan to launch trilateral trade
talks between China, Japan and South Korea. Some ASEAN countries,
worried about the trilateral initiative, pushed for a wider deal.
