RCEP Full Implemention: Enabler Of A Peaceful Resolution Of Conflicts In South China Sea – Speech

Since the conception of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in Indonesia in 2011 and its formal launching in Cambodia in 2012 until it takes full effect in 2022, this regional economic cooperation project has gone a long way in promoting free trade and economic cooperation among its participants. The RCEP connects not only the economies of participating countries but the rest of the world as well.

The RCEP is now the world’s largest free-trade arrangement outside of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It represents 30% or 2.3 billion of the world’s population with the full participation of 10 members of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five key countries where ASEAN has existing free trade agreements namely Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. With these 15 dynamic economies, the RCEP also accounts for 30% or $38.8 billion of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and almost 30% of the global trade. The RCEP implementation is a real game changer not only for freer and fair trade in Asia but also in the wider international community of nations.

Existing scholarly literatures have already asserted that free trade and open commerce can promote peace by deepening international communications, deepening connectivity, and broadening transnational ties among states. Trade also naturally locks states in a complex web of interdependence making their national interests inextricably linked with each other. Trade can eventually form a security community, a group of states enjoying mutually beneficial relations of what Karl Deutsch describes as dependable expectations peaceful change. In a security community built by mutually beneficial free trade, states can pursue common development, reciprocal prosperity, and shared long-term interests making war and other forms of violent conflicts among them as counter-productive, unlikely and utterly impossible.

By strengthening economic cooperation fueled by free, open and inclusive trade, ASEAN has achieved a security community where war among ASEAN states have already become a thing of the past. This was first experienced by Western European states through the European Union (EU) now including Eastern European states.

In Southeast Asia, for example, territorial dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over Sabah is no longer a reason for the two neighbors to go to war against each other because of the commitment of these two countries to cooperate and avoid conflict within the ASEAN principle of amity and cooperation in Southeast Asia. This also applies to other members of ASEAN still involved in territorial disputes, border problems, and maritime jurisdictional conflicts.

There are still irritants in intra-ASEAN relations. But ASEAN member states have learned to overcome their differences because of mutual respects and solidarity. The RCEP intensifies ASEAN solidarity for common prosperity.

Because it champions free, open and inclusive trade, the full implementation of RCEP can also contribute to the peaceful resolution of conflicts in the South China Sea by creating platforms for parties to build confidence and create mutual trusts through economic cooperation and integration. The full implementation of RCEP can also propel the implementation of China-ASEAN Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea especially in pursuing cooperation in various areas like marine environmental research, marine environmental protection, search and rescue operation, safety of navigation at sea, joint fishery management, combatting transnational crimes at sea and even joint development of natural gas.

However, disruptive military activities of extra-regional powers threatened by China’s growing influence in the RCEP region can undermine and subvert the peaceful resolution of conflicts in the South China Sea. Increased American military presence through the expansion of Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the Philippines, the formation of Australia, United Kingdom and United States (AUKUS), the creation of QUAD composed of Australia, India, Japan and the United States, and other US-led minilateralism aimed at countering China can hijack the peaceful intention of RCEP as these initiatives undermine the ASEAN Way of conflict avoidance and pacific settlement of disputes through diplomatic dialogues and consultations.

It is therefore imperative for RCEP participants to also deeply engage the US in economic diplomacy and development cooperation to eliminate barriers to peace in the region, specifically in the South China Sea.

If the US continues to challenge rather than engage China in the current era, their major power rivalry can make the peace in the RCEP and the South China Sea regions fragile and the new future for Asia’s economy uncertain. But if the US and China can cooperate and peacefully co-exist, the full implementation of RCEP can provide a recipe for world peace and the eventual resolution of conflicts in the South China Sea towards a better future for Asia’s economy.

Speech delivered at the international symposium, “RCEP: New Future for Asia’s Economy” organized by the Boao Forum for Asia and the China Institute for Research and Development held at the Shangri-la Bangkok on 27 August 2024.