China is now the standard-bearer of global free trade, with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) at the heart of its strategy. The RCEP is a free-trade deal among the ten-member states of Asean and six Asia-Pacific states – Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. It is now the world’s biggest trade deal and covers half the world’s population.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, BRICS, and the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are countering US-led trade in the Asia Pacific, given that the six non-Asean member states in the RCEP are also bidding to join the revised TTP by the end of December. Should they do so, it would be a game-changer, tilting Asia’s trade framework away from Chinese control under the RCEP.

Now, the battle is on to secure those six – Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand – as trade partners. The propaganda war has already begun, with China claiming that it is trying to sway Asia-Pacific partners to stand by free trade via the RCEP amid rising US protectionism.

The RCEP is billed as an antidote to the American agenda, which has seen tariffs imposed on almost half of all Chinese imports to the US and retaliatory levies by China.