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For China, TPP is a guide to deepen reform action

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A few days ago had just reached the TPP negotiations by many domestic and international public opinion interpretation for the United States (and Japan) and its allies attempt to is on the rise in China's new round economic containment may, can't say a little truth to this statement are not, directly on it should is President Barack Obama when it comes to TPP more than a stressed, must by the United States and non Chinese to develop the trade rules of the 21st century.

However, simply using the cold war thinking to look at this in addition to the current WTO, the world's largest integrated program, is clearly wrong and harmful. Therefore, for most Chinese people, it is imperative to make clear what is TPP.

TPP, the abbreviation of "PartnershipAgreement Trans-Pacific" in English, Chinese translation for "trans Pacific Partnership agreement". It was originally made in the 2003-2005, which is made by New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei four small Asian countries, and with the United States in 2008, the rapid expansion of the upgrade to President Obama "has a broad membership base, and has a high standard of trade agreement in twenty-first Century," the regional free trade agreement. Between 2010 and 2012, Malaysia, Canada and Mexico have joined the negotiations, particularly the world's third largest economies, Japan in 2013 to join, so that TPP truly become a giant free trade agreement covering most economies in the Asia Pacific region. Up to now, TPP member countries have reached 12, covering about 800000000 people, their total economic output accounted for nearly 40% of the world's total trade accounted for 1/3, far exceeding the proportion of the world's largest regional integration organization eu.

President Obama will promote TTP as the policy focus of its second term, driven by the main three aspects of power. First, after the 2008 financial crisis, the U. S. economic downturn, the need to boost employment through the expansion of exports, it is the United States in recent years to promote the global strategic layout of the Asia Pacific, but the most important point is that the United States and strive to make the leading TPP negotiations process and issues, which not only make their own benefit, strengthen the United States Asia Pacific leader position, and is expected to reshape international trade rules.

If the TPP is eventually approved by countries (the US Congress's attitude may be a considerable obstacle), it will be the largest trade agreement for the 20 years. TPP will be together with the United States and the European Union to create a "cross the Atlantic trade and investment partnership" (Trade and InvestmentPartnership Transatlantic, referred to as TTIP), a new framework for the construction of a global business trade led by the United States and the west.

Obama described the TPP as the next generation of trade agreements, saying it will go beyond the existing free trade agreements, as a set of "sample" or "seed", it will be a series of "trade issues in twenty-first Century" into the negotiations, such as data flow, financial supervision and intellectual property, etc.. U.S. trade representative Michael Frohman in the introduction of TPP also always like to repeatedly stressed that it aims to create a high standard, the twenty-first Century agreement".

So, its "high standards" and "the next generation" is actually reflected in where?

TPP negotiations are made up of 21 working groups, covering the 29 chapter of the issue, and has been described as the most ambitious free trade agreement ever.

If China strongly advocates the "ASEAN (10) +N" model is still focusing on the traditional tariff cuts, TPP in addition to the abolition of tariffs, but also focus on the handling of various non-tariff trade barriers, including government procurement, state-owned enterprises, financial market regulation and integration of labor rights, intellectual property, environmental protection and many other areas. It can be said to be an upgraded version of the FTA, but more important is that the past free trade agreement is only concerned about the border between countries and countries open issue, TPP will be extended to the jurisdiction of the country within the boundaries of a country. It seeks to "unify" many aspects of market competition and government regulation, including economic legislation, economic transparency, anti corruption, financial liberalization and so on.

Since the TPP negotiations are not open to the outside world, the outside world only after the agreement has finally reached a chance to know its specific content. However, from the TPP negotiations in 2011 announced the framework of the agreement, this "next generation trade agreement" mainly includes five areas of negotiation:

First, comprehensive market access, reduce tariffs and other trade and investment barriers;

Second, comprehensive regional agreements to promote the development of production and supply chain between TPP member states;

Third, cross domain trade issues, including regulatory consistency, promote competition, small and medium enterprises and development;

Fourth, the new trade challenges, to promote trade and investment in innovative products and services, including the digital economy and green technology related trade and investment;

Fifth, the agreement with the times, the agreement can be updated to address the new problems in the future, as well as the new problems brought by the TPP scale.

Visible, TPP covers all goods and services, trade, investment and services, the full range of integration; it takes the common rules of origin and labour standards, or a kind of factor of production integration; it requires to take an open and transparent competition policy, common policy and investment environment protection policies, thus greatly promoting the integration policy; finally, although in the outline of the TPP, the free flow of personnel is defined in the temporary business personnel, but from an overall perspective, it is a business flow, logistics flow, the full liberalization of the policy platform. Its ultimate goal is to fully integrated.

From the view of the current stage of China is not possible to join TPP. Not to say anything else, only in the case of state-owned enterprises, TPP requires the state government to cancel all the subsidies for state-owned enterprises and foreign investment in state-owned enterprises to give preferential financing measures to protect the economic activities of foreign private enterprises, preferential treatment to cancel government procurement, etc.. Obviously, China is not likely to do this in a short time.

Therefore, TPP is actually a "complete market economy" between the economic contracts. It seems to focus on the economic content, but it is bound to have a profound impact on a country's government behavior, and even the political system. For China, if we want to further promote the reform and opening up, better integration into the new round of globalization, then it should be more of a kind of external push, a guide to deepen reform.

If you meet the requirements of TPP, China's face will be completely different from today. And with China's economic volume, at that time, plus not to join the TPP is not a very important thing.

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