GEOPOLITICS OF RCEP AND SINO-AMERICAN COMPETITION IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC (original) (raw)

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and China's Geopolitical Checkmate in the Indo-Pacific Region

The Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs - Air University Press - USAF, 2021

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), as the world's largest free trade bloc, integrates the strategically sensitive Indo-Pacific region where China's rise is predominantly seen with suspicion by most of the regional countries. Besides countering the Noodle/Spaghetti Bowl Effect of multiple free trade agreements under ASEAN+1 formula, the RCEP, which is driven by the willingness among regional countries to seek greater economic integration, gives Beijing the opportunity to link regional economies ranging from the integrated arrangements like ASEAN to those of the regional opponents like Japan and South Korea into China's economic orbit. This helps China to discourage regional opposition to its rise in the Indo-Pacific region. On the other hand, it weakens the prospects for a regionally coherent response spearheaded by the United States toward China's rise. Therefore, this article explains the strategic importance of the RCEP and its role in China's rise and declining credibility of the American opposition to it. Finally, using qualitative content analysis, the article argues that a successful RCEP amplifies the strategic ambiguity among the US regional allies and strategic partners linked in security arrangements like Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in their commitment to counter China and will further weaken the credibility of the American efforts to contain China's rise in the Indo-Pacific region.

Towards a New ASEAN Regionalism: Navigating the Outlook on Indo-Pacific in Post-RCEP Beyond 2020

Insignia: Journal of International Relations

The adoption of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has brought the Asia Pacific region into a new paradigm of ASEAN regionalism. The global economic competition between China and the western world significantly impacts Southeast Asian countries regionally due to geographical factors and regional integration towards the ASEAN community. The changing regional order then happened after RCEP increased China's interest in the Southeast Asian geopolitical landscape and ASEAN – China's role in post-pandemic global governance. The authors discussed how China's soft power influences ASEAN's regionalism through the RCEP and vice versa. Further, it investigates how the dynamics impact the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific. Using the concept of soft power and institutional neoliberalism, this article has concluded that China is now ascending its inter-regional cooperation to capture a more significant interdependence to challenge the Western's rule of global ...

The Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership and its Implications for China’s Role in East Asia Regional Integration

Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, 2012

As an extension of APEC, the TPP once again stimulates the competition between the two wide trends of regional integration in East Asia, namely East Asianism and Asia Pacificism. With trade agreements serving both economic and strategic purposes, the TPP has the potential to change the political and security environment in East Asia. This article addresses the economic and strategic implications of the TPP and China’s strategic debate on the TPP. This article first describes the development of regional integration in East Asia and the potential implications of the TPP on the process before examining China’s strategic debate on the new U.S. initiative.

Asian Security China and Competing Cooperation in Asia-Pacific: TPP, RCEP, and the New Silk Road

Regional order in the Asia Pacific is under contest: the U.S pursues the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and some Asian nations promote an Asian track of dialogues. Both multilateral tracks seek to shape China’s regional behaviors and manage the rise of China. Little research, however, has been done on either how China views these frameworks or China’s own regional initiative, the New Silk Road Strategy. The article presents a first-hand analysis of Chinese elites’ views and its new proposition for a regional order, thus to offer policy lessons regarding the rise of China. Theoretically, the domestic-conscious approach with its emphasis on internal variables adds to existing literature on China and regionalism and helps us understand how China’s domestic dynamics drives its regional policymaking and implementation.

US’ Strategic Reorientation and Chinese Counter-Narrative: The Economic Reality of Asia-Pacific

2016

The Concept of Asia-Pacific empowers the US to involve in all matters broadly related to Asia-Pacific. In a simple form, the Asia-Pacific region is encompassing West Coast of North America, Australia and major parts of Asia, having the potential to come up as a geopolitical driving force. Asia-Pacific, comprising 22 percent of world land, is one of the most significant regions that possess three well-known Economic Powers, i.e. the US, Japan, and China. Similarly, the region is to be found strategically at an intersection of Middle East, North America, East Asia, and Europe with world's six largest ports and five highly important Sea Lanes of Communication for international trading. Having so much importance, Goldman Sachs confirms that hub of the global economic activities will be transferred to Asia-Pacific decisively by 2050. The study will analyze the very importance of Asia-Pacific, the US's strategic reorientation and the Chinese counternarrative for the region.

The Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific: A Constructive Approach to Multilateralizing Asian Regionalism

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper examines the prospect of realizing regional economic integration via the mechanism of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The FTAAP initiative represents a politically ambitious, high potential benefit option for achieving Asian regional integration. Among its desirable attributes, the FTAAP initiative could help revive and promote a successful conclusion of the Doha Round negotiations; constitute a "Plan B" hedge if Doha fails; short-circuit the further proliferation of bilateral and sub-regional preferential agreements that create substantial new discrimination and discord within the Asia-Pacific region; defuse the renewed risk of "drawing a line down the middle of the Pacific" as East Asian, and perhaps the Western Hemisphere, initiatives produce disintegration of the Asia-Pacific region rather than the integration of that broader region that the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum was created to foster; channel the People's Republic of China (PRC)-United States economic conflict into a more constructive and less confrontational context; and revitalize APEC, which is of enhanced importance because of the prospects for Asia-Pacific and especially the PRC-US fissures. An incremental approach to the FTAAP, explicitly embodying enforceable reciprocal commitments, offers the best hope delivering on the concept's abundant benefits. JEL Classification: O16; O53; R11 ADBI Working Paper 336 Bergsten, Noland, and Schott

Between Power Politics and International Economic Law: Asian Regionalism, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and U.S.-China Trade Relations

International Political Economy: Trade Policy eJournal, 2018

This article examines the interactions of power politics and international economic law in the development of regionalism in Asia, particularly in the context of United States-China trade relations. It argues that the process of regional economic integration in Asia has been slow-moving because of the politicization of regionalism by power rivalries. China’s initial regional integration initiatives apparently ignored the United States, a superpower which has always been a major player in Asia and an indispensable part of the region’s economic process. The United States-led Trans-Pacific Partnership was allegedly designed to exclude China, Asia’s largest economy. On the other hand, the Trans-Pacific Partnership also spurred the effects of competitive liberalization, pushing China to deepen its economic reform domestically and engage its trading partners on friendlier terms at regional and international levels. The demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership does not amount to the death o...