Sign it! East Asian economic integration ushered in an important milestone

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was officially signed on the 15th during a series of meetings of East Asian cooperation leaders.The free trade zone with the largest population, the most diverse membership structure and the greatest potential for development in the world was born. This is a major milestone in the process of regional economic integration in East Asia and has injected new impetus into the regional and even world economic recovery.

At present, profound and complex changes are taking place in the international situation, economic globalization has encountered a countercurrent, unilateralism and protectionism have become increasingly fierce, and the COVID-19 epidemic has brought a serious impact on countries around the world, including East Asian countries.In this context, 15 member states maintained close consultations and signed RCEP as scheduled. A free trade zone covering more than 3 billion people, accounting for 1/3 GDP in the world, and the largest in the world arises at the historic moment.The signing of the agreement is an important step for regional countries to take practical actions to maintain the multilateral trading system and build an open world economy, and is of landmark significance for deepening regional economic integration and stabilizing the global economy.

At a difficult time when the COVID-19 epidemic spread around the world, East Asian countries chose to open up and cooperate. As Azmin BABA, Malaysia's minister of international trade and industry, said, signing RCEP means that ASEAN and its dialogue partners say "yes" to free trade and "no" to protectionism.

With the joint efforts of all parties, the situation of epidemic prevention and control in East Asia has generally stabilized and improved. Countries are resuming work and production in an orderly manner under the background of normalization of epidemic prevention and control, and economic and social development has been steadily restored. In East Asia's efforts to extricate itself from the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, the signing of RCEP has injected new momentum into the regional economic recovery. RCEP will further promote trade and investment in East Asia, strengthen regional industrial chain supply chain cooperation, and achieve complementary advantages and mutual benefit of regional countries.

As the main engine of economic growth in East Asia, China has taken the lead in controlling the epidemic and achieving economic recovery, helping countries in the region to hedge against the impact of the epidemic.In the first three quarters of this year, economic, trade and investment cooperation between China and ASEAN rose against the trend and continued to contribute to promoting regional economic recovery in East Asia.

China implements the concept of new development, promotes high-quality development, speeds up the construction of a new development pattern, and promotes a high level of opening up to the outside world while persisting in expanding domestic demand. The third Expo, held as scheduled not long ago, once again demonstrated the great potential of the Chinese market and demonstrated the responsibility of China as a big country that supports trade liberalization and takes the initiative to open its markets to the world.

China has been actively participating in the RCEP negotiations and has played an indispensable role.China will, as always, support ASEAN to play a leading role and cooperate with all parties to do a good job in the implementation of RCEP, so that the results will benefit regional enterprises and people earlier. With the signing of RCEP, ASEAN is generally looking forward to further sharing the dividends of China's development and opening up, and regional countries are also looking forward to strengthening cooperation in building "Belt and Road Initiative", promoting regional connectivity, and unleashing the potential of East Asian markets integrated by RCEP.

RCEP condenses the will and consensus of countries in the region, indicating that regional economic integration in East Asia is the will of the people. The signing of the agreement is the result of eight years of consultations between all parties, and it is also a new starting point for deepening regional economic cooperation in East Asia. All parties should take advantage of the situation, comply with the general trend of opening up and cooperation, promote economic recovery after the epidemic through mutual cooperation, benefit countries and people in the region, make positive contributions to the construction of an open world economy, and make continuous progress towards the goal of building an East Asian community.