日批在线视频_内射毛片内射国产夫妻_亚洲三级小视频_在线观看亚洲大片短视频_女性向h片资源在线观看_亚洲最大网

US EUROPE AFRICA ASIA 中文
Opinion / Op-Ed Contributors

RCEP talks should focus on early harvest

By Ouyang wei and Xia Fan (China Daily) Updated: 2014-05-13 07:31

The fifth round of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership talks are set to commence in Singapore in June, barely two months after the conclusion of the fourth round, a sign that the efforts of 16 Asian countries to create the world's biggest free trade area are gaining momentum. Measures to overcome the challenges in the follow-up negotiations were high on the agenda at the 24th summit of the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and related meetings, which concluded on Sunday.

Comprising the 10 ASEAN member nations as well as China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand, the RCEP aims to integrate all of ASEAN's existing free-trade agreements into one. Should it be realized it will account for over 30 percent of the world's gross domestic product and cover about 45 percent of the global population. Although intra-regional trade in Asia has almost tripled, to some $3 trillion, over the last decade, it is still lagging behind when compared to the European Union.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at this year's Bo'ao Forum for Asia annual conference that regional economic integration meets the interests of all Asian countries. "We need to work in unison to promote trade liberalization and investment facilitation, and upgrade regional and sub-regional cooperation," Li said, adding China will work with all other parties to accelerate the RCEP negotiating process.

The RCEP was first proposed by ASEAN as the regional grouping struggled to entrench its centrality in promoting cooperation with East Asian nations at a time when the United States-led Trans-Pacific Partnership was gearing up. The TPP requires much deeper economic liberalization from its members and contains provisions to protect labor rights, the environment and intellectual property rights, the reform of State-owned enterprises and will boldly eliminate tariffs. By contrast, the RCEP appears to be more inclusive and flexible as it was designed to cater to the diverse circumstances and development gaps that exist within ASEAN and between ASEAN and its FTA partners. This makes it more attractive to less-developed countries and ensures wider membership.

It is anticipated the RCEP will promote income gains of approximately $644 billion by 2025, or 0.6 percent of the world's GDP, according to a study by the Asian Development Bank. The RCEP talks are scheduled for completion in 2015 when agreements will be finalized before being implemented in the following years.

Since the first round of talks was held in Brunei in May 2013, there have been four rounds of negotiations in all. In the first three rounds of talks, participating countries reached preliminary consensuses in the areas of tariff concessions, rules of origin, customs procedures and trade facilitation, among others. In the latest round of negotiations, progress was made on a range of issues including goods, services, investment and the agreement framework. Nonetheless, Chinese delegation leader Wang Shouwen, assistant minister of the Ministry of Commerce, said the RCEP negotiations remain a daunting task due to the different development levels and varied stances among the participating countries.

The social and economic development gulf is huge among RCEP countries, with the GDP of the most developed one, Japan, being over 300 times more than that of the least developed ones, say, Myanmar. Meanwhile, each of the RCEP countries has its own sensitive areas that are vulnerable to the competition expected to be brought about by the RCEP, such as the manufacturing industry in India and the farming sector in Japan.

Accordingly, each country will inevitably seek maximum protection for their own vulnerable sectors in the negotiations, thus making the process more difficult.

Furthermore, the RCEP is mainly based on bilateral FTAs among the participating countries. In the absence of some important FTAs, the RCEP negotiations will not make a breakthrough any time soon. Although ASEAN has already signed FTAs with the other six countries, some of them have yet to clinch deals among themselves, including those between Japan and South Korea, China and Japan, India and New Zealand, and China and India.

The RCEP, rather than a blanket agreement, should be a phased-in arrangement that accommodates member countries at different levels of development. While catering to the differences among the 16 countries and providing special policies for the least developed members of ASEAN, the RCEP negotiations could focus on those areas where a consensus can be reached more easily - similar to the "Early Harvest Program" of the ASEAN-China FTA - so that participating countries can enjoy the benefits as early as possible and will be willing to promote follow-up deals.

The authors are writers with Xinhua News Agency.

Most Viewed Today's Top News
New type of urbanization is in the details
...
主站蜘蛛池模板: 亚洲激情自拍 | 亚洲欧美制服 | 日韩综合在线观看 | 人人搞人人干 | 国产亚洲福利 | 精品无人国产偷自产在线 | 激情四射av| 国产精品视频免费观看 | 日韩视频一区二区 | 日本黄色网络 | 日韩毛片一级 | 国产剧情av在线 | 久久久久亚洲精品中文字幕 | 97在线观 | 日韩久久在线 | 国产精品久久久久久久妇 | 成人涩涩小片视频日本 | 成人综合网址 | 日韩欧美视频免费观看 | 国产日产亚洲系列最新 | 中文字幕激情 | 欧美视频一区二区在线 | 谁有毛片网站 | 欧美一区二区三区婷婷 | 黄色a级片网站 | 成人精品区 | 免费看一级黄色大片 | 日韩国产欧美一区二区三区 | 欧美日韩在线一区二区三区 | a网站在线观看 | 精品资源成人 | 久久99亚洲精品 | 天天躁日日躁狠狠躁喷水 | 中文字幕在线观看第二页 | 伊人久久影视 | 国产一区欧美 | 欧美专区在线视频 | 国产一级免费在线观看 | 国产精品久久久久久网站 | 免费日韩网站 | 一区二区三区在线观看视频 |