Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement: RCEP Promotes Stable Foreign Investment And Foreign Trade

Since the formal entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP), especially since its full entry into force for 15 signatory countries in June this year, China has attached great importance to and vigorously promoted the implementation of RCEP. This has not only promoted the cooperation in goods trade and investment between China and RCEP partners, but also played a positive role in stabilizing foreign investment and foreign trade, and stabilizing the chain.

As a free trade agreement with the largest population, the largest economic and trade scale and the greatest development potential in the world, RCEP's entry into force and implementation will bring significant opportunities for China's development. In the face of complex and severe international situation, RCEP has provided strong support for China to build a new pattern of high-level opening up, and also provided strong support for enterprises to expand export markets, increase trade opportunities, improve business environment, and reduce trade costs of intermediate and final products.

From the perspective of goods trade, RCEP has become an important force to drive the growth of China's foreign trade. In 2022, China's trade growth with RCEP partners will contribute 28.8% to the growth of foreign trade in the year, of which exports to RCEP partners will contribute 50.8% to the growth of foreign trade exports in the year. Moreover, the central and western regions showed stronger growth vitality. Last year, the growth rate of goods trade between the central region and RCEP partners was 13.8 percentage points higher than that of the eastern region, which shows that RCEP plays an important role in promoting the coordinated development of China's regional economy.

From the perspective of investment cooperation, RCEP has become an important help for China to stabilize foreign investment. In 2022, China's actual use of foreign investment from RCEP partners will reach 23.53 billion US dollars, up 24.8% year on year, much higher than the 9% growth rate of world investment in China. The contribution rate of RCEP region to the growth of China's actual utilization of foreign capital reached 29.9%, 17.7 percentage points higher than that in 2021. RCEP region is also a hot area for Chinese enterprises to invest abroad. In 2022, China's non-financial direct investment in RCEP partners totaled US $17.96 billion, a net increase of about US $2.5 billion over the previous year, up 18.9% year on year, accounting for 15.4% of China's foreign non-financial direct investment, up 5 percentage points over the previous year.

RCEP also plays a prominent role in stabilizing and fixing the chain. RCEP has promoted the cooperation between China and ASEAN countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as members such as Japan and South Korea in many fields such as electronic products, new energy products, automobiles, textiles, etc., and has formed a positive interaction between trade and investment, playing a positive role in stabilizing and strengthening China's industrial chain supply chain. In 2022, China's trade in intermediate goods within the RCEP region will reach $1.3 trillion, accounting for 64.9% of the trade within the RCEP region and 33.8% of the world's trade in intermediate goods.

In addition, RCEP e-commerce, trade facilitation and other rules provide a good development environment for China to expand digital economy cooperation with RCEP partners. Cross border e-commerce has become an important new business model between China and RCEP partners, forming a new growth pole of regional trade, and further increasing consumer welfare.

During the 20th China ASEAN Expo, the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce issued the Report on the Effectiveness and Development Prospects of Regional Cooperation in RCEP 2023, which proposed that since the implementation of RCEP, the industrial chain supply chain cooperation among members has shown strong resilience, promoting regional economic and trade cooperation and the initial release of economic growth dividends, not only ASEAN and other RCEP members have benefited significantly, It has also produced positive spillover and demonstration effects, which has become a favorable factor driving the growth of global trade and investment under multiple crises.

At present, the global economic development is facing great downward pressure, and the increasing geopolitical risks and uncertainties in the surrounding areas pose great challenges to regional cooperation. However, the regional economy of RCEP has maintained a good growth trend in general, and still has great growth potential in the future. All members need to jointly operate and make good use of RCEP, an open cooperation platform, to fully release the opening dividend of RCEP and make greater contributions to regional economic growth.