With increasing international challenges, including fragmentation in free trade arrangements, China has always been vigorously promoting a regional free trade pact in the Asia-Pacific that is open, inclusive and beneficial to all.
China has on many occasions called for attentions to the diversity and difference in development levels of the economies in the region in a bid to avoid fragmental and exclusive deals.
It is also vehemently enhancing openness of its own economy and actively providing public goods embodied by the initiative on the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (Belt and Road Initiative) and regional cooperative financial tools.
At the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Lima last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the APEC economies to stay committed to pushing economic globalization forward, increasing openness of the Asia-Pacific economy, breaking bottlenecks in regional inter-connectivity and blazing new trails in reform and innovation.
China's efforts to advance the broad trade deal across the Asia-Pacific were hailed by APEC Executive Director Alan Bollard.
The FTAAP, an idea around for some time, has received a big boost with the strategic study during China's hosting year in 2014, he said in a recent interview with Xinhua, ahead of the 25th APEC leaders' meeting to be held in Da Nang, Vietnam on Nov 10-11.
Bollard has observed fallouts such as the United States moving out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as well as developments including progress in talks on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with Chinese contribution.
The RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the six countries with which ASEAN has existing free trade agreements - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
The 16 RCEP participating countries account for almost half of the world's population, and contribute over a quarter of its exports and some 30 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).
China is willing to, along with ASEAN, push ahead talks on the RCEP, said Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli during a China-ASEAN expo in Nanning, capital of Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in September.
The Philippines, the host of a RCEP ministerial meeting in the same month, lauded China's efforts in pushing for concrete results in talks toward establishing the RCEP.
Philippine Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said the Chinese delegation led by the minister and a vice minister of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce "have shown a strong cooperative attitude and strong support to the ongoing (RCEP) process." (Source: China Daily)
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