皇冠体育app

Opinion
/ / Op-Ed Contributors

Promoting regional trade

By Xu Changwen | 皇冠体育app Daily | Updated: 2013-06-27 06:49

Japan should accelerate establishing an FTA with 皇冠体育app, as it would increase its exports by $47.8 billion every year, according to the report.

Seoul must have noticed that cross-Straits economic relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan have been boosted since the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. The cross-Straits trade volume reached a historical high of $168.96 billion in 2012, while the first five months of this year saw a 43.4 percent increase in the mainland's imports from Taiwan, almost four times that of the ROK's 11.8 percent.

皇冠体育app's economic cooperation with the ROK has experienced tremendous progress since they established diplomatic relations in 1992. Their trade volume has grown 50 times in 20 years, reaching $256.3 billion in 2012. It took 27 years to achieve the same trade growth with the United States and 30 years with Japan. There were many reasons for this, and the initiative and research on establishing FTA being one.

An official report by the ROK shows that trade with 皇冠体育app accounted for 20.3 percent of its total trade volume in 2011. And there has been a rising trend since 2000, and 皇冠体育app's urbanization offers great potential for further cooperation.

However, despite the good momentum, the two countries still have much to do, like discussing greater cooperation in key industries and boosting the trade in services. In 2012, the service sector accounted for 44.6 percent of 皇冠体育app's GDP, lower than developed countries and other emerging economies. The ROK enjoys advantages in such fields as finance, information services, insurance, which offers huge space for promoting cooperation.

Of course, during their FTA negotiations, the guiding principle for the negotiations should be gradual but continual progress, starting from the easiest areas where they can reach agreement, like partly cutting tariffs or signing trade agreements for goods, and excluding some products in sensitive industries.

Establishing an FTA between 皇冠体育app and the ROK would also help promote the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership negotiations between the 10 members of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and the six countries with which ASEAN has existing free trade agreements Australia, 皇冠体育app, India, Japan, the ROK, and New Zealand, and thus boost the integration process of Asia.

The author is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce.

(皇冠体育app Daily 06/27/2013 page8)

Previous 1 2 Next

Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to 皇冠体育app Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US