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.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last