Australia has always been ambiguous about whether to let China join the CPTPP, but at the critical moment, Singapore has sent "assistance" to China, and China's entry into the group has been put on the agenda.
As we all know, in the past two years, many Asia-Pacific countries have been making efforts to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and South Korea, Ukraine and China are actively preparing for this, and China officially submitted a written letter of application as early as 2012.
According to the CPTPP, an applicant country can become a member of the CPTPP after meeting the criteria for joining the agreement, as long as it has the unanimous consent of the 11 member states. However, it was not easy to obtain the consent of all Member States. You know, many of these 11 countries are allies of the United States.
This year, the UK was the first to qualify for the CPTPP, making it not only the first country outside the founding member states to join, but also the first European country to join the CPTPP. Among them, it is inevitable that there will be the help of Western countries to the UK. After all, the so-called standard is only a reference, and the final say in whether or not it can really join the CPTPP is still in the hands of these 11 countries.
In addition, the current entry of the UK into the CPTPP means that the economic zone is extending towards Europe, which is obviously more beneficial to the CPTPP from the perspective of development, but it will be more difficult for other countries to join. Recently, China has also strengthened exchanges with CPTPP member states on this matter.
Not long ago, during Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's visit to China, China and Australia also discussed this matter. After all, in the past few years, China-Australia relations were at a low point, and there was no room for negotiations between the two sides on this matter.
However, Australia's attitude on this matter has always been ambiguous, after Albanese publicly stated that he would not oppose China's accession to the CPTPP in order to ease relations with China. Recent. The Australian side also made the same statement again, but also stressed that it would consider China's application on the basis of "actual circumstances".
Obviously, Australia's "no objection" does not mean support, and the so-called "actual situation" means that there is still a great deal of uncertainty in this matter, and hard conditions aside, China-Australia relations and Australia's China policy may affect the outcome of this matter.
To put it bluntly, Australia's desire for China to join the CPTPP is not strong, and it is not even ruled out that they also want to use it as a "bargaining chip" in negotiations with China. It is worth mentioning that at this juncture, Singapore has sent a big "assist" to China.
It has been learned that in the past two days, China and Singapore have held a meeting of the Joint Committee on Bilateral Cooperation. The meeting was co-chaired for the first time by China's Deputy Prime Minister Ding Xuexiang and Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong as co-chairs, and it was also the highest-level annual cooperation meeting between China and Singapore.
In addition, this is the first meeting between China and Singapore after elevating the bilateral relationship to an all-round, high-quality, forward-looking partnership, and Lawrence Wong is Lee Hsien Loong's quasi-leader, and China also attaches great importance to this meeting. Of course, with the joint efforts of China and Singapore, this meeting has also achieved considerable results.
According to the cooperation documents released by the two countries after the meeting, China and Singapore reached a total of 24 cooperation agreements at the meeting. It includes agriculture, digital economy, scientific research and innovation, and so on. Among them, two are the "highlights" of this achievement. One is that China and New Zealand have signed a 30-day visa waiver agreement, which will come into effect as soon as next year.
In this way, it will not only be conducive to the exchanges between the people of the two countries and promote the development of tourism on both sides, but also further stimulate investment on both sides and stimulate the economies of the two countries. The other is that China and New Zealand have signed an upgraded version of the free trade agreement, and the level of liberalization of investment between the two countries will be greatly improved after the upgrade of the free trade agreement.
In addition, after the two sides upgraded the free trade agreement, it is also of great significance, marking that China's free trade negotiations have entered the era of high-standard negative list, thus laying a more solid foundation for China's accession to the CPTPP. To put it bluntly, the upgrade of the China-Singapore FTA will also further promote China's accession to the CPTPP.
It can be seen that China is a big step forward from joining the CPTPP. So, while some U.S. allies have been blocking China's accession, China still has a number of partners behind it. Of course, what is more important is that China has always spoken with strength, and the economic achievements made in recent years are obvious to the whole world, and no country will refuse to cooperate with the world's second largest economy, which is China's greatest advantage.