WAYS TO ADVANCE FTAAP
APEC members should push forward the FTAAP process in a "comprehensive and systemic way," according to Zhang Jun, director-general of the Department of International Economic Affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
"The process of FTAAP shall serve as a rebuff to anti-globalization and a toolkit to strengthen Asia-Pacific regional integration," he was quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper as saying in November.
"The FTAAP, being highly inclusive, can embrace economies at different levels of development and fully accommodate their development needs and comfortability, and once established, will deliver economic gains dwarfing any existing regional FTAs," Zhang said.
It will also "chart the course of integrating various trade arrangements in the region, meeting the challenge of the fragmentation in regional cooperation, and furthering the regional economic integration in the Asia-Pacific," Zhang added.
To bring together the 21 diverse economies of the Asia-Pacific under the same set of trade and investment rules, relevant parties are required to take time and be patient in future negotiations from the long-term perspective, Han Jae-jin, senior research fellow at the Hyundai Research Institute (HRO), said in a recent interview with Xinhua.
"Bilateral and mega FTAs have something in common. Both require concessions over sensitive items and understanding of different situations. It takes time and needs long dialogue," Han said.
Promoting the FTAAP on the basis of the TPP and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a very ideal plan as the TPP is in an impasse and the RCEP also faces big challenges due to different levels of development in its member countries, Wang Jiangyu, associate professor at Faculty of Law of National University of Singapore, told Xinhua.
The RCEP is a free trade pact involving the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and six other countries -- China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
"China can promote the FTAAP in an orderly way on the basis of current free trade deals," Wang said.
China can carry out bilateral free trade negotiations with countries willing to open their markets within the RCEP framework and upgrade existing bilateral free trade deals to promote the formation of the RCEP, he elaborated.
Besides, to make the FTAAP a meaningful free trade zone in the Pacific Rim, leaders of China and the United States, the two key players in the region, need to "discuss the issue to create a meaningful starting point of the FTAAP," said Kim Young-Gui, research fellow at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.
Furthermore, along with world economic development and convergence, connectivity, in addition to trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, has become a key driver for regional economic integration.
"Pushing for the FTAAP would be more effective if it goes together with the Belt and Road Initiative," said Han, the HRO researcher.
The Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative proposed by China in 2013 to bring together countries in Asia, Europe and even Africa via overland and maritime networks.
Since the initiative was launched in 2013, Chinese companies had built 52 economic and trade cooperation zones in the Belt and Road countries, generating 900 million U.S. dollars in tax revenues and nearly 70,000 jobs for these countries by July 2016. Enditem
