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Xi Jinping’s World Trade Game: Unfolding China’s Strategic Path Alongside the ASEAN-led RCEP

Since the launch of negotiations in 2012, China has been the leading force behind the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is essentially a free trade agreement (FTA) between the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the six countries with which ASEAN has existing FTAs, including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. If, as seems likely, the RCEP is accomplished in the near future, it will be the world’s largest free-trade agreement, covering a population of 3.5 billion and about 40% of the world trade volumes. Given the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is dead in the water after the Trump administration change of tack in US trade policy, many pundits see the RCEP as China’s first serious attempt to offer a geopolitical alternative to the American world order. According to Beijing’s official position, the RCEP differs from the TPP as it does not aim to establish a new multilateral trade framework, but merely to consolidate the existing global standards on trade for their integration in the Asian economic relations. At the same time, the Chinese leadership does not hide that promoting pan-Asian economic integration outside of the US control serves the purpose to carve greater geopolitical autonomy and flexibility in the global decision-making processes. This article seeks to understand whether and to what extent China is leading the RCEP negotiations to pursue its own geopolitical paradigm shift in Asia, which is to avoid the creation of a regional anti-China alliance under US auspices in the short term, and to create an alternative to the American world order in the long term.