China's free trade "circle of friends" has expanded steadily
Novel coronavirus pneumonia background, China's opening up efforts will not drop, but continue to push forward with other countries and regions to sign FTA and regional trade agreements.
In addition to pushing for the signing of the RCEP agreement, the free trade agreement between the government of the people's Republic of China and the royal government of Cambodia was officially signed on October 12. At the same time, China South Korea free trade agreement, China EU investment agreement and other existing trade agreements are progressing in an orderly manner as planned.
Qian Keming, Vice Minister of Commerce, said at the previous policy briefing that China will strive to complete the negotiations on the China EU investment agreement, implement the China EU agreement on geographical indications, promote institutional openness, and accelerate the formation of a basic institutional system and regulatory model that is consistent with international investment and trade rules.
Chi Fulin, President of China (Hainan) reform and Development Research Institute, believes that China should significantly enhance the actual driving effect of regional free trade agreements on trade, and enhance the level of liberalization and facilitation of regional free trade agreements. By 2025, the proportion of trade volume between China and the target countries that have signed regional free trade agreements will increase from 35.2% in 2019 to more than 50%.
Huang Qifan, vice president of the China International Economic Exchange Center, said, "the proposal of the CPC Central Committee on formulating the fourteenth five year plan for national economic and social development and the long-term goals for the year 2035" points out that "implementing the strategy of promoting free trade zones and building a global high-standard network of free trade zones" is a major initiative to deal with the dispute over rules and actively participate in international economic governance Measures. The promotion strategy adopted by China is to build trust based on rules by seeking common ground while reserving differences and seeking the maximum common divisor, so as to boost the construction of an open world economy.
Cheng Shi believes that the new round of globalization in the future is not a simple repetition of the previous round, but will present a completely different new structure. The world is no longer flat, but turns to "multi peak structure", which is composed of many regional communities, forming a nested system of intra industry trade regionalization and inter industry trade globalization. The development of regional economic integration will lead globalization and become the pillar of globalization system. In line with this historical trend, North America and Europe have accelerated the regional construction. Among them, the United States announced its withdrawal from the TPP and signed a new tariff free agreement between the United States and Mexico. The European Union has seized on the change of the epidemic situation and used the EU recovery fund to further strengthen internal unity. In this regard, as one of the three pillars of the future globalization system, Asian regionalization is facing the huge challenge of either advancing or retreating.
At present, China has become the world's second largest single market on the demand side, and China is expected to become the world's largest consumer market in 2020. At the same time, on the supply side, China has unique advantages of complete industrial chain and is the only hub of Asian value chain system. China has become the de facto dual center of supply and demand in Asia.
Cheng Shi said that China's choice is not only related to its own opening up, but also to the future of regionalization and globalization.
