China should at an appropriate time join the US-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) regional trade accord, as its broad aims are in line with Beijing’s own economic reform agenda, an influential Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper said yesterday.
China is not among the 12 Pacific Rim countries who earlier this month agreed to the trade pact, the most ambitious in a generation. The accord includes Australia and Japan among economies worth a combined US$28 trillion.
Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng (高虎城) has said the country does not feel targeted by the pact, but is going to evaluate its likely impact comprehensively.
In a commentary, the biweekly Study Times, published by the CCP’s Central Party School that trains rising officials, admitted there are those in China who view the TPP as a “plot” to isolate and restrain the country’s global ambitions.
However, the broad aims of the TPP, including reducing things such as administrative approvals and protecting the environment, were what China wants to achieve too, it wrote.
China has been trying to shift to a more sustainable, ecologically sound, consumption-driven economic growth model.
“The rules of the TPP and the direction of China’s reforms and opening up are in line,” the newspaper said.
“China should keep paying close attention and at an appropriate time, in accordance with progress on domestic reform, join the TPP, while limiting the costs associated to the greatest degree,” it added.
However, how China’s state-owned industries might be affected by joining the TPP would need careful consideration, as the party has made clear their key role in the economy, the newspaper said.
Beijing has been pushing its own trade pact, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a proposed 16-nation free-trade area that would be the world’s biggest such bloc, encompassing 3.4 billion people.
The RCEP, which would be comprised of the 10-nation ASEAN plus six others — China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand — is a Beijing-backed trade framework that has gained prominence as an alternative to US plans.
The TPP aims to cut trade barriers and set common standards from Vietnam to Canada. However, it has also been pitched as a way to counter China’s rising economic and political clout in the region.
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