RCEP: Insiders' views of the RCEP negotiations - interviews with RCEP negotiators
For those following trade agreement negotiations, I recently came across an open access book published in February that will likely be of interest. The book is titled Political Economy of East Asian Economic Integration, and it looks at the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement’s (RCEP) influence on East Asia and the rest of the world.
It has chapters on ASEAN, Australia, China, Japan, Europe and others (all worth a read), but I wanted to particularly highlight an interesting chapter that has verbatim answers from RCEP negotiators to a serious of questions put them regarding RCEP.1 These provide interesting insights into the motivations of negotiators and countries when approaching the RCEP negotiations, their views of how negotiations progressed (including hold-ups and strategic decisions made), and the relationships between countries on different issues and at different times.
I’ve extracted some particularly interesting comments in this post.
First, comments from Dato Lim Jock Hoi (ASEAN’s Secretary-General in the final years of the RCEP negotiations) demonstrate the key role of the ASEAN Secretariat in keeping the negotiations on track:
I took on a constructive role at the ministerial meetings, by creating and maintaining momentum of the RCEP negotiations, moderating views among the RCEP participating countries, gaining broad base support from relevant stakeholders, coordinating efforts within ASEAN, ensuring continuous support to the RCEP Chair, and tabling possible “landing zones” until the negotiations were concluded and the RCEP Agreement signed in 2020.
Second, there are a range of comments emphasising the ASEAN-led nature of RCEP and frustration at the commentary from outside of the negotiations that RCEP was an initiative of China:
Dato Lim Jock Hoi: ASEAN was the original initiator for the establishment RCEP as a part of its original workplan under the AEC Blueprint 2025 with a view to consolidating the ASEAN economic integration. From its conception, throughout the negotiations, and to its current progress, RCEP continues to remain an ASEAN-led process.
Sopheap Chan [Cambodia]: RCEP, which is often mistakenly viewed to as “China- or Japan-led”, was born out of the milestone of ASEAN’s middle-power diplomacy. It undeniably came from all ASEAN-plus one FTAs.
Tetsuya Watanabe [Japan]: The fact that [RCEP as a framework for regional cooperation with ASEAN at its core] was respected is of great significance to ASEAN centrality. There was a case where India withdrew at in the final phase, but many people in Japan originally explained that it had a geopolitical significance to balance China, and many people said that Japan should not participate in the conclusion of negotiations. However, this is a central project of ASEAN, and in that context, it is important for Japan to cooperate in the completion of the project. In the end, Japan also made efforts to conclude the negotiations, as this was something Japan should be actively involved in. In the midst of friction between the US and China, there were evaluations of a China-led framework or a framework without the US, but I think this was a regional project of ASEAN and that it was important for Japan to be involved as a member of the region.
Indeed, recalling the history of RCEP, Rebecca Maria from Malaysia notes that ASEAN deliberately chose a broader grouping for RCEP as compared to a narrower ‘ASEAN+3’ arrangement favoured by China:
… there were two competing proposals for this, namely ASEAN+6 (or Comprehensive Economic Partnership for ASEAN and East Asia, CEPEA) and ASEAN+3 (East Asia Free Trade Area, EAFTA). CEPEA was driven by Japan, while EAFTA, China. It was then that we decided that an ASEAN+6 arrangement would be in ASEAN’s interest. Wanting to break free of the Tug-of-War between CEPEA and EAFTA, we decided to call the arrangement the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP.
… RCEP suffered constant comparison with TPP and later CPTPP. First, there was the perception that RCEP was China’s response to US-led TPP. This was an assertion that we had to constantly debunk …
While RCEP may have been an ASEAN-led project, there are also a number of comments on how the negotiations tested ASEAN centrality:
Milton Churche [Australia[: However, ASEAN centrality was tested throughout the RCEP negotiations. There was often a sense that ASEAN Member States would look to promote national interests rather than seriously seek to pursue these interests through a common ASEAN position. This suggests weaknesses in ASE AN’s institutional processes and leadership and that these processes need strengthening to give greater weight to the goal of ASEAN as a single market and production base, as well to the goal of equitable economic development.
Third, there are references to ‘trade tensions’ driving the negotiations, perhaps indicating that today’s trade tensions may also drive support for deeper economic integration in the region:
Dato Lim Jock Hoi: … two external drivers helped provide a sense of urgency to conclude the negotiations. First, the continuing trade tension among some parties. This situation urged ASEAN and ASEAN’s other major partners to look for alternative ways to ensure global trade would continue to grow. Second, the pandemic that severely hit the global community. This unprecedented event finally brought home the need to keep markets open, bringing even greater reasons to conclude the negotiations. … RCEP is also expected to offset the economic loss caused by trade tensions between major economies.
Milton Churche: Trump administration’s trade policy – its disruptive nature while continuing to abide by most trade commitments – probably strengthened the determination of most RCEP participants to achieving a successful outcome given the need to shore up the rules-based trading system.
Fourth, negotiators were asked about negotiation dynamics and the waxing and waning of momentum (including being asked to score the momentum of the negotiations on a scale from 1 to 10):
Iman Pambagyo (Chair of the RCEP Trade Negotiating Committee): In this regards, ASEAN unity was crucial in steering the directions of the negotiation. In fact, during the negotiation, issues concerning TPP and CPTPP, trade tension between Japan and South Korea, unresolved issues in the CJK trade negotiation, and uneasy relations between India and China all could be neutralized only with ASEAN’s strong stance in keeping the RCEP negotiation relatively sterile from non-RCEP issues. … Between 2018 and early 2020, the negotiation process entered into its critical stage (score 7, 8 and 9, respectively). It was the phase when ASEAN should decide on the negative approach to services commitments; Japan to compromise its high calls on IPR and e-commerce; New Zealand on the scope of tariff commitments; Indonesia on partners’ RCEP tariff commitments versus their respective commitments under respective ASEAN Plus One FTAs; and India’s further engagement in the negotiation. I believe I should score “9” for the situation I encountered in late 2019 through early 2020 when India decided to leave the negotiation table, followed by potential domino effects with Japan showing indifference whether to go with RCEP-15 or just leave the negotiation, and possible Australia’s response should Japan decided to leave the RCEP and focusing instead on TPP/CPTPP.
Anna Robeniol [Philippines]: From the perspective of a lead negotiator for an RPC, engaging at the bilateral level and at the level of the TNC with a limited negotiating bandwidth has been quite difficult. From the perspective of an ASEAN Secretariat officer, finding landing zones to come up with an ASEAN position and subsequently reconciling this ASEAN position with that of the six non-ASEAN RPCs have been most challenging. It was nearly impossible to achieve comprehensive and balanced outcomes when the 16 countries participating in the negotiations have significant development gaps, divergent national interests and expectations.
Rebecca Maria: There was optimism at the start so I would give that a score of 8. However, as the reality dawned and we kept missing deadlines, it went down to 4 or 5. Towards the end, when India left, it went down to 3 (from a political perspective) but possibly 8 for some of the negotiators as the albatross was taken off their backs!
Milton Churche: Another important challenge was that initially there was a tendency for ASEAN to prioritise the goods negotiations and to downplay the importance of ambition levels in other areas including services. Pressure from India was important in ASEAN accepting that a modern FTA must also adequately cover services. The fact that by 2014 China had come to see RCEP as central to its approach to regional economic integration, and to developing its bilateral economic relationship with India, deepened the pressure on ASEAN to accept the need for more ambition on services as part of the effort to ensure Indian participation in the outcome. As negotiations proceeded, it became clear that India was primarily focused on temporary movement of natural persons, but other countries maintained the pressure for all areas of services to be adequately covered.
Rebecca Maria: The media from one Dialogue Partner kept releasing news about the state of play in the negotiations. This affected the “trust” among the negotiators and impacted some of the more sensitive aspects of the negotiations, driving a wedge among the negotiators.
Michael Mugliston [Australia]: Throughout the RCEP negotiations, competitive pressure alternated between the RCEP and TPP negotiations. Initially it was TPP that put pressure on RCEP and a significant development in 2014 was China adopting RCEP as a key vehicle to advance its regional economic integration objectives, towards development of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).
Sopheap Chan [Cambodia]: Among CPTPP, BRI, Indo-Pacific, US–China conflict, digitalization, SDGs and other development, CPTPP was the most pressing factor for RCEP negotiation team. During the negotiations of RCEP, the early TPP or later CPTPP conclusion had put lots of pressures to the RCEP negotiation teams to catch up and fulfill the mandate given by the RCEP Leaders. … Yet, not all agreed elements from CPTPP were useful to RCEP negotiations because it sometime had caused distraction and prolong negotiations as well. … RCEP is one of the two mega-regional trading blocs in the Asia-Pacific that all ASEAN Member States are parties to that agreement, while the other one has been left out several ASEAN Member States. This kind of separation will only harm ASEAN Community which we have been built over a number of years in order to reach our common destination for the shared future.
These are just a few of the comments I found of particular interest, there’s much more in the chapter (and rest of the book), including a detailed history of rules of origin negotiations from an Australian goods negotiators and further detail on the various positions countries took across different chapters and issues.
Full disclosure, I worked on RCEP for the Australian government from 2017 until 2020.