The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity: America’s Answer to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership?

... additional contracts . This is precisely what happened with China’s trade agreement with Hong Kong, which covered a limited number of service industry sectors and investment in 2004, as well as with Beijing’s agreement with Macau. The agreement with ASEAN evolved in a similar manner. Importantly, China has stayed true to this integration course for two decades. The RCEP may very well evolve in the same way. While it is true that there are no fundamentally new agreements within this partnership in its current form and that its main purpose remains to harmonize the norms of agreements concluded in the ASEAN+ format ...