Article 1.3: Objectives

The objectives of this Agreement are to:

b) progressively liberalise and facilitate trade in goods among the Parties through, inter alia, progressive elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers on substantially all trade in goods among the Parties;

c) progressively liberalise trade in services among the Parties with substantial sectoral coverage to achieve substantial elimination of restrictions and discriminatory measures with respect to trade in services among the Parties; and

d) create a liberal, facilitative, and competitive investment environment in the region, that will enhance investment opportunities and the promotion, protection, facilitation, and liberalisation of investment among the Parties.

Xi, you have posted cringe, you will lose subscriber 😠

This trade deal appears to be a bit overblown :

4. What’s different about the RCEP? Unlike the TPP, or Trans-Pacific Partnership, and other U.S.-led trade deals, the RCEP doesn’t require its members to take steps to liberalize their economies and protect labor rights, environmental standards and intellectual property. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has called it a “very low-grade treaty” that lacks the scope of the TPP. But RCEP’s imminent implementation illustrates America’s diminished clout and could make it harder for U.S. businesses to compete in the vast region.

From what I've read so far, the deal does not restrict government subsidies or state-owned enterprises, allows countries to retain key tariffs in protection of what they may deem as especially sensitive or critical industries, and also includes technology transfers to the least developed members like Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Unlike the TPP, it also does not include controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms or limit government sponsorship of industries. RCEP has been criticized for being less protective of intellectual property rights and services that cross borders than other large trade deals. Sucks that it doesn't really include labor or environmental protections, but the deal overall does help undermine US influence in the region and shift us closer to a multipolar world order.

Like Michael Pettis says (he's the professor of finance at Peking University), the hype for the RCEP is overblown. It's nothing more than a way to reduce friction in trade between the countries involved. Most of the countries involved run trade surpluses so they'll still need to export to other countries with deficits (Australia has but it's too small a country to really matter). What it does do is make it more difficult for the US to try and isolate China from the global trade network.

As much as it sucks, China is completely entangled within the global trade network, so it also has to play by its rules. Those expecting China to push for labor protections don't understand that China rarely makes demands like that of other countries anyways. It doesn't really matter that they include environmental provisions in the agreement, the push by China (and probably Japan) towards renewables is going to force other countries to follow anyhow.

The agreement to liberalise trade/investment probably has something to do with China's new (but not really new) dual circulation model (trying to increase international investment and domestic consumption). In order to accomplish the second part, the CPC will have no choice but to increase the share of what their workers produce. This is in line with Xi's "Chinese Dream for a Moderately Prosperous Society" but will unlikely have effects on workers of other countries.

Most of chapter 10 is pretty bad but clause 7 seems particularly fucked

Article 10.7:

Senior Management and Board of Directors

1. No Party shall require that a juridical person of that Party that is a covered investment appoint to a senior management position a natural person of any particular nationality.

2. A Party may require that a majority of the board of directors, or any committee thereof, of a juridical person of that Party that is a covered investment, be of a particular nationality or resident in the territory of that Party, provided that the requirement does not materially impair the ability of the investor to exercise control over its investment.

What does this mean for the program the CPC had going that every private company needed to have a certain number of CPC people on the board?

deleted by creator

I’ll let Professor Jane Kelsey, who led the charge against the TPPA in NZ, explain:

There were huge protests against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Why not with this?

Partly, it’s because some of the most controversial aspects of the TPPA (later renamed the CPTPP) weren’t included in this one. Professor Jane Kelsey, who staunchly opposed the TPPA, said those absences showed that citizens had become “wary and weary” of such deals. In particular, she noted that “there is no chapter on state-owned enterprises or government procurement, no right for foreign investors to enforce special rights through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), some intellectual property rights for Big Pharma are absent or diluted, the electronic commerce chapter left out some rules and is not enforceable.”

When the TPPA protests were happening, the ISDS system and the prospect of Pharmac being weakened were two of the really big sticking points mentioned a lot by protesters.

So basically it just removes some tariffs, centralised some rules, and reduced waiting times at ports. Nothing transformational. It doesn’t really empower capital in the same way the TPPA did.

The flip side is that it leaves labour rights and environmental protections broadly down to the signatory states, at least in this agreement. But increasing access to Chinese solar panels is pretty good for climate change.

Here's the document: https://rcepsec.org/legal-text/

-7 points

"we must hide this [important] critique"

This is reading to me as an agreement not to nationalise shit out from under investors/force them to sell.

Article 10.5: Treatment of Investment

201.Each Party shall accord to covered investments fair and equitable treatment and full protection and security, in accordance with the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens.

2.For greater certainty:

a)fair and equitable treatment requires each Party not to deny justice in any legal or administrative proceedings;

b)full protection and security requires each Party to take such measures as may be reasonably necessary to ensure the physical protection and security of the covered investment; and

c)the concepts of fair and equitable treatment and full protection and security do not require treatment to be accorded to covered investments in addition to or beyond that which is required under the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens, and do not create additional substantive rights.

Edit:

Found this on expropriation, it seems to be allowed but you can't do it because it's owned by non-nationals and you gotta pay "fair market value":

Article 10.13: Expropriation

251.No Party shall expropriate or nationalise a covered investment either directly or through measures equivalent to expropriation or This Article shall be interpreted in accordance with Annex 10B (Expropriation).10-16 nationalisation (hereinafter referred to as “expropriation” in this Chapter), except:

(a)for a public purpose;

(b)in a non-discriminatory manner;

(c )on payment of compensation in accordance with paragraphs 2 and 3; and

(d)in accordance with due process of law.

Probably not legally binding (thank god) but very cringe:

Article 10.17:

Facilitation of Investment

1.Subject to its laws and regulations, each Party shall endeavour to facilitate investments among the Parties, including through:

(a)creating the necessary environment for all forms of investment;

Not a single word on climate or pollution. And nothing on labour issues.

The lack of climate provisions is somewhat understandable. There is already a major international climate agreement in place, and (for worse) that reflects as far as the international community is willing to go at this point. The counter is that China should have used the allure of this deal to push better emission reduction targets, but who knows, maybe that was a complete non-starter at negotiations because the issue was considered settled via the 2016 Paris Agreement.

The lack of labor protections is far more damning in my eyes. We know the free trade playbook at this point: outsource production from countries with stronger labor protections to countries with weaker ones, kneecapping labor in the former while further exploiting later in the latter. An major economic power that really gives a shit about workers should at least include some labor protections in an agreement like this to eliminate sweatshops in whatever countries end up handling production. That's not even socialism, that's just giving workers a modicum of insulation from free market capitalism.

That said, it's possible China is doing the best it can, and that scenario should be mentioned as well. China has no way to force anyone to adopt improved labor protections, and asking for those protections may have been a non-starter. If those were off the table from the beginning (through no fault of China's), wouldn't this still be an improvement, if only on anti-imperialist grounds? Undermining the economic superiority of the U.S. is good, full stop. Anything on top of that is gravy. And if you're going to have an international trade environment dominated by neoliberalism, isn't it an improvement that more of the benefits of that flow to China instead of the U.S.? One is doing a lot less military aggression, is improving the material conditions of its workers much more substantially, and is taking climate change much more seriously.

It's my bedtime soon. Thank you all for commenting, thanks especially for user Civility for prying deep into the document.

I know this thing is brand new, and we all have our takes on free trade and productive forces yadda yadda.

For the record I live in that part of the world, I'm not a yank. I personally will have to keep tabs on this thing.

Doesn't really matter. We're past the runaway point on global warming. This will all be moot in a century or two and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

I'm enjoying this thread full of airmchair lawyers, good post OP

Yeah China is just capitalism.

They have some safeguards the US won’t accept, but overall it’s just capitalism.