TPP deal will not have big impact on RCEP, says Chinese foreign ministry official

China has noted that the 11 Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries have made some progress on negotiations, but it “hasn’t paid too much attention,” an official from the Chinese foreign ministry said on Saturday.

Zhang Jun, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s international economics department, made the remark on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Vietnam’s resort city of Da Nang.

China has been promoting an alternate vision for regional trade with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes Australia, India and more than a dozen other countries, but not the US.

Zhang said trade arrangements in the region should promote openness and inclusiveness, with no “exclusive clubs.”

Zhang also said the RCEP trade pact would not be impacted by the TPP, a pact in which China is not involved. The two trade deals are not mutually exclusive, and some countries would be members of both.

“Even though there are many challenges in the RCEP negotiations, we are moving forward. Meanwhile, we have full confidence in the RCEP’s promising vision and we believe that the RCEP will function as a driving force in AsiaPacific [economic] integration,” Zhang pointed out.

There are different regional trade arrangements in the Asia Pacific region, but they should help to safeguard the multilateral trade system and offer winwin cooperation, Zhang noted.

The countries involved in the TPP agreed to move ahead with the trade pact without the US by suspending some provisions from the original deal, Vietnamese Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh and Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said at a press conference on Saturday in Danang, Vietnam.

Ministers have agreed on the outlines under a new name, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership, also known as TPP-11.

The 16 RCEP countries account for almost half of the world’s population and contribute about 30 percent of global GDP.