Beijing has applied to join an Asia-Pacific trade pact once pushed by the US as a way to isolate China and solidify AmeriFcan dominance in the region.
China submitted the formal application letter to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to New Zealand, it said in a statement late on Thursday in Beijing.
Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤) had a follow-up call with his counterpart, Damien O’Connor, as New Zealand is the depositary nation for the agreement.
Photo: Reuters
The application is certain to spark a reaction from Washington, where a number of lawmakers have expressed concern about China’s efforts to join. However, there is no sign that the administration of US President Joe Biden is interested in rejoining the deal.
The original deal was seen by the US as an economic bloc to counterbalance China’s growing power, with then-US president Barack Obama saying in 2016 that the US, not China, should write the regional rules of trade.
Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, pulled out of the deal in 2017, with Japan leading the revised and renamed pact to a successful conclusion the following year.
The application is the result of months of discussions after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last year said that Beijing was interested in joining. China is the second country to apply to join the 11-nation deal, after the UK asked to become a member earlier this year.
“It’s a perfectly rational calculation by the Chinese leadership,” said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. “Given how the Chinese market is driving the economic recovery, their cards will never be this strong again. Or rather, the cost of rejecting China’s application will never be this high.”
The application underlines the increasingly complicated geopolitical situation in Asia, where China is the dominant economy and main trading partner for many, but competition with the US is getting worse.
Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and Japan are CPTPP members and close allies of the US, but along with China, they are also members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which was successfully negotiated last year.
Military and diplomatic tensions between China and Japan, the largest economy in CPTPP, have been increasing due to China’s increased military presence around islands that both nations claim as their own, Chinese threats to Taiwan and other factors.
Asked about China’s application, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Motegi Toshimitsu yesterday said: “Japan must look properly at whether it is ready to reach the high level of TPP.”
“We will confer with other member countries and deal with this, taking into account strategic issues,” he said, adding that the UK’s application would be handled first.
Taiwan has also expressed an interest in joining the CPTPP and has been talking with members of the group, with some Japanese ruling party lawmakers last month supporting Taiwan’s entry.
However, the Chinese application would complicate that as Beijing opposes Taiwan joining any international organization or group.
The bid from China to join the CPTPP was made less than a day after Australia, the US and the UK announced they would form a more cohesive defense arrangement to offset Beijing’s rising military prowess. China attacked that agreement, but it will now need to negotiate with Australia and probably the UK about CPTPP accession.
Any talks will not be simple — China and Australia are already in the midst of an economic and trade dispute, which has seen Beijing apply tariffs or block billions of dollars of Australian exports. Still, China last week publicly lobbied Canberra for its support to join the deal.
Canada is another CPTPP member that is in a dispute with China, with one Canadian citizen jailed for 11 years and another still awaiting sentencing in cases that are seen as linked to the arrest in Canada of the daughter of the founder of Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
A number of US lawmakers have been calling for the US to either rejoin the CPTPP or to be more active on trade diplomacy in the region. However, the Biden administration has not announced any concrete trade policies for the region, although there are reports it is discussing a digital trade deal covering Asia-Pacific economies.
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