TPP and RCEP: Competing or Complementary Models of Economic Integration?
Two major trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), stand to define the parameters of economic integration in Asia, arguably the world’s most dynamic region. While the TPP and RCEP are frequently described as rival trading blocs led by the United States and China respectively, we should look beyond this easy characterization to explore the complex dynamics among these mega trade agreements.
On February 11, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies hosted a public seminar to discuss the multifaceted set of economic, political and security implications generated by the coexistence of TPP and RCEP in the Asia-Pacific region. Experts from the United States and East Asia explored the extent to which these two trade blocs differ; the role that countries with dual membership, like Japan, can play in facilitating the adoption of compatible rules; the chances that China may eventually seek membership in the TPP; and the challenges and opportunities for merging these two trade groupings in a future free trade area of the Asia-Pacific.
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Agenda
Keynote Address
Kenichiro Sasae
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to the United States
Panelists
Takashi Terada
Professor, Department of Political Science - Doshisha University
Operating Advisor - U.S.-Japan Research Institute
Claude Barfield
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Yunling Zhang
Professor and Director, Division of International Studies - Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Sanchita Basu Das
ISEAS Fellow and Lead Researcher, ASEAN Studies Centre - Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
Introduction and Moderator
Mireya Solís
Director - Center for East Asia Policy Studies
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for East Asia Policy Studies
Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies
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[Suggesting that trilateral meetings between China, South Korea, and Japan be revived] is a way to say this is not zero sum and this is not an anti-China development. It’s smart diplomacy to be saying this.
Just as the mettle of the TPP project has been tested by the United States, now it will be tested by China.