Speeding up China's Efforts to Join the CPTPP

According to Lu and Zhao, Beijing should step up its lobbying of China-sceptic CPTPP members and its alignment with CPTPP requirements before the UK becomes an official member.

Dear Everyone,

Long before Beijing officially announced its application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in September 2021 and also before Li Keqiang’s unexpected statement a year earlier that “China has a positive and open attitude toward joining the CPTPP”, many Chinese scholars were already advocating that China join this mega free trade agreement (FTA) consisting of Australia, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Brunei, New Zealand and its soon-to-be new member the United Kingdom.

For instance, in a paper published four years ago, Bai Jie (白洁) and Su Qingyi (苏庆义), two researchers at CASS’s Institute of World Economics and Politics (IWEP), argued that “[China’s] joining the CPTPP would not only have considerable economic significance, but also great political significance.” Beyond the purely economic considerations of joining such a bloc, Bai and Su saw this as a way of “breaking the US’s trade-r…