Look. I'm not trying to start another pointless struggle session. Far from that, I want each and every one of us to confront this most strange attempt at multilateralism by two of our favourite existing socialisms.
There's no substantial article on the environment. Not a single word on climate or pollution. And nothing on labour issues.
I get that the whole thing is brand new and the member countries will probably amend to add more to the document in later stages.
But now is the point the heads of governments go back to their respective legislative body for ratification. Again, nothing on labour, the environment or the climate.
I want us Chapos to confront the likelihood that existing socialist experiments are faltering, even abandoning, a key promise of socialism to workers: reducing work hours for more leisure time. That, and no idea how trade is going to connect to the climate crisis.
Article 1.3: Objectives
The objectives of this Agreement are to:
b) progressively liberalise and facilitate trade in goods among the Parties through, inter alia, progressive elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers on substantially all trade in goods among the Parties;
c) progressively liberalise trade in services among the Parties with substantial sectoral coverage to achieve substantial elimination of restrictions and discriminatory measures with respect to trade in services among the Parties; and
d) create a liberal, facilitative, and competitive investment environment in the region, that will enhance investment opportunities and the promotion, protection, facilitation, and liberalisation of investment among the Parties.
Xi, you have posted cringe, you will lose subscriber 😠
Oh god I didn't even think about searching how many liberalisms are there in the doc
This trade deal appears to be a bit overblown :
- What’s different about the RCEP? Unlike the TPP, or Trans-Pacific Partnership, and other U.S.-led trade deals, the RCEP doesn’t require its members to take steps to liberalize their economies and protect labor rights, environmental standards and intellectual property. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has called it a “very low-grade treaty” that lacks the scope of the TPP. But RCEP’s imminent implementation illustrates America’s diminished clout and could make it harder for U.S. businesses to compete in the vast region.
From what I've read so far, the deal does not restrict government subsidies or state-owned enterprises, allows countries to retain key tariffs in protection of what they may deem as especially sensitive or critical industries, and also includes technology transfers to the least developed members like Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Unlike the TPP, it also does not include controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms or limit government sponsorship of industries. RCEP has been criticized for being less protective of intellectual property rights and services that cross borders than other large trade deals. Sucks that it doesn't really include labor or environmental protections, but the deal overall does help undermine US influence in the region and shift us closer to a multipolar world order.
Like Michael Pettis says (he's the professor of finance at Peking University), the hype for the RCEP is overblown. It's nothing more than a way to reduce friction in trade between the countries involved. Most of the countries involved run trade surpluses so they'll still need to export to other countries with deficits (Australia has but it's too small a country to really matter). What it does do is make it more difficult for the US to try and isolate China from the global trade network.
As much as it sucks, China is completely entangled within the global trade network, so it also has to play by its rules. Those expecting China to push for labor protections don't understand that China rarely makes demands like that of other countries anyways. It doesn't really matter that they include environmental provisions in the agreement, the push by China (and probably Japan) towards renewables is going to force other countries to follow anyhow.
The agreement to liberalise trade/investment probably has something to do with China's new (but not really new) dual circulation model (trying to increase international investment and domestic consumption). In order to accomplish the second part, the CPC will have no choice but to increase the share of what their workers produce. This is in line with Xi's "Chinese Dream for a Moderately Prosperous Society" but will unlikely have effects on workers of other countries.
Most of chapter 10 is pretty bad but clause 7 seems particularly fucked
Article 10.7:
Senior Management and Board of Directors
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No Party shall require that a juridical person of that Party that is a covered investment appoint to a senior management position a natural person of any particular nationality.
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A Party may require that a majority of the board of directors, or any committee thereof, of a juridical person of that Party that is a covered investment, be of a particular nationality or resident in the territory of that Party, provided that the requirement does not materially impair the ability of the investor to exercise control over its investment.
What does this mean for the program the CPC had going that every private company needed to have a certain number of CPC people on the board?
Sounds like they can force the board of directors to have party members and they can force the workforce to have party members but can't force senior management to be party members.
1 is "Nobody can be forced to be in senior management of a specific nationality"
2 is "People CAN be forced to be on the board of directors of a specific nationality"
And there is no clause for the rest of the workforce therefore it is assumed allowed.
In fact, the more I read it over... It doesn't affect it at all? The clause doesn't prevent forcing people into positions, it prevents forcing people based on requiring they be a specific nationality. You could force people based on being a CPC member and let the company pick whatever nationality they want? I am not a lawyer.
This shit is really hard to parse though.
A requirement of being a CPC member is chinese nationality tho, is why I think it could interfere with that. Also not a lawyer tho lol.
I don't know how that affects it at all and we probably need a lawyer to tell us.
That's "party" as in "party to the agreement", not political party.
Yah, the PRC is a party to the agreement tho, and every member of the CPC is a chinese national. I'm not seeing how that changes things.
It is about basis of nationality not organization. This has no impact on that policy. Legal interpretation is very strict.
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I’ll let Professor Jane Kelsey, who led the charge against the TPPA in NZ, explain:
There were huge protests against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Why not with this?
Partly, it’s because some of the most controversial aspects of the TPPA (later renamed the CPTPP) weren’t included in this one. Professor Jane Kelsey, who staunchly opposed the TPPA, said those absences showed that citizens had become “wary and weary” of such deals. In particular, she noted that “there is no chapter on state-owned enterprises or government procurement, no right for foreign investors to enforce special rights through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), some intellectual property rights for Big Pharma are absent or diluted, the electronic commerce chapter left out some rules and is not enforceable.”
When the TPPA protests were happening, the ISDS system and the prospect of Pharmac being weakened were two of the really big sticking points mentioned a lot by protesters.
So basically it just removes some tariffs, centralised some rules, and reduced waiting times at ports. Nothing transformational. It doesn’t really empower capital in the same way the TPPA did.
The flip side is that it leaves labour rights and environmental protections broadly down to the signatory states, at least in this agreement. But increasing access to Chinese solar panels is pretty good for climate change.
-7 points
"we must hide this [important] critique"
I really don't mind what's up with that, but for now the counterarguments seem fine
Probably not legally binding (thank god) but very cringe:
Article 10.17:
Facilitation of Investment
1.Subject to its laws and regulations, each Party shall endeavour to facilitate investments among the Parties, including through:
(a)creating the necessary environment for all forms of investment;
Not a single word on climate or pollution. And nothing on labour issues.
The lack of climate provisions is somewhat understandable. There is already a major international climate agreement in place, and (for worse) that reflects as far as the international community is willing to go at this point. The counter is that China should have used the allure of this deal to push better emission reduction targets, but who knows, maybe that was a complete non-starter at negotiations because the issue was considered settled via the 2016 Paris Agreement.
The lack of labor protections is far more damning in my eyes. We know the free trade playbook at this point: outsource production from countries with stronger labor protections to countries with weaker ones, kneecapping labor in the former while further exploiting later in the latter. An major economic power that really gives a shit about workers should at least include some labor protections in an agreement like this to eliminate sweatshops in whatever countries end up handling production. That's not even socialism, that's just giving workers a modicum of insulation from free market capitalism.
That said, it's possible China is doing the best it can, and that scenario should be mentioned as well. China has no way to force anyone to adopt improved labor protections, and asking for those protections may have been a non-starter. If those were off the table from the beginning (through no fault of China's), wouldn't this still be an improvement, if only on anti-imperialist grounds? Undermining the economic superiority of the U.S. is good, full stop. Anything on top of that is gravy. And if you're going to have an international trade environment dominated by neoliberalism, isn't it an improvement that more of the benefits of that flow to China instead of the U.S.? One is doing a lot less military aggression, is improving the material conditions of its workers much more substantially, and is taking climate change much more seriously.
I found this line interesting - "Undermining the economic superiority of the U.S. is good, full stop. Anything on top of that is gravy."
I would say the minimum we need from a neoliberal trade deal to even consider not outright criticizing it to hell is that it undermine the economic superiority of the U.S. Now, to demand even neutrality, let alone support (critical or not), would require substantive measures on things OP mentioned i.e., climate, labour etc (such as restricting copyright).
We criticize Kamala Harris for establishing "a student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities." But then we support what is basically that useless on a bigger scale. Neolibs say her Pell Grants plan is genuinely good, and SuccDems say atleast it'll help some people. We on the left are supposed to "tell it like it is" (just read Marx's criticisms of his fellow leftists - anarchists or socialists) but then hide behind "at least it hurts the US".
But anyways, I don't wanna make this a struggle session on China or whatever. Left unity and all that, right?
I would say the minimum we need from a neoliberal trade deal to even consider not outright criticizing it to hell is that it undermine the economic superiority of the U.S.
It's certainly a low bar to clear. At the same time, it's impossible to overstate the harmfulness of U.S. economic superiority and the potential benefits of rolling that back. We can't say "death to America" and then not at least critically support something that directly harms American interests.
We criticize Kamala Harris for establishing “a student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities.” But then we support what is basically that useless on a bigger scale.
We criticize Democrats for offering shit because so many countries have proven programs that are far better. For example, the student loan program you cite that's means tested to death is laughable in comparison to all the countries that have effectively free college. There's no reason to give Democrats any credit for suggesting something that's decades behind most of Europe.
In contrast, I don't think there's any precedent for this scale of multilateral trade agreement that includes significant labor protections. Certainly nothing in the 30 years since the fall of the Soviet Union. To paraphrase someone else in this thread, I don't think leftists like us (i.e., posters) should be too critical of socialist states on the grounds that they have thus far failed to achieve something that's never (or almost never) been done before. I don't think that appropriately accounts for the enormous challenges of turning theory into reality. The measuring stick should be "are they doing as much as they realistically are able to do, given real-world conditions" not "are they doing as much as is theoretically possible, assuming the best possible conditions."
But anyways, I don’t wanna make this a struggle session on China or whatever. Left unity and all that, right?
Always a good consideration.
Yeah, I guess I agree. Those are all fair points.
I commented elsewhere too to someone who raised a very similar point re: "doing as much as they realistically are able to do". I think that's an unfalsefiable claim. You just have to trust that the govt is doing things the only way they think will work. But, I mean, that doesn't convince anyone who doesn't already trust them.
I'm not sure "unfalsifiable" is the best term for it. We know there are some worse things they could do, and we know there are some better things we can imagine that are practically impossible. We can give them credit for not doing some of the bad things and we can not blame them for not doing the impossible things. Even inside of those boundaries, we can have rational discussions about what is possible-and-easy vs. what is possible-but-difficult.
This conversation does involve (fact-based) speculation, but it's the type of speculation you or I would engage in to determine if an individual was making a good-faith effort at doing something.
This is reading to me as an agreement not to nationalise shit out from under investors/force them to sell.
Article 10.5: Treatment of Investment
201.Each Party shall accord to covered investments fair and equitable treatment and full protection and security, in accordance with the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens.
2.For greater certainty:
a)fair and equitable treatment requires each Party not to deny justice in any legal or administrative proceedings;
b)full protection and security requires each Party to take such measures as may be reasonably necessary to ensure the physical protection and security of the covered investment; and
c)the concepts of fair and equitable treatment and full protection and security do not require treatment to be accorded to covered investments in addition to or beyond that which is required under the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens, and do not create additional substantive rights.
Edit:
Found this on expropriation, it seems to be allowed but you can't do it because it's owned by non-nationals and you gotta pay "fair market value":
Article 10.13: Expropriation
251.No Party shall expropriate or nationalise a covered investment either directly or through measures equivalent to expropriation or This Article shall be interpreted in accordance with Annex 10B (Expropriation).10-16 nationalisation (hereinafter referred to as “expropriation” in this Chapter), except:
(a)for a public purpose;
(b)in a non-discriminatory manner;
(c )on payment of compensation in accordance with paragraphs 2 and 3; and
(d)in accordance with due process of law.
What is the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens? I feel like understanding that is essential to parsing this.
Montevideo convention is being referenced:
nationals and foreigners are under the same protection of the law and the national authorities, and foreigners may not claim rights other than or more extensive than those of nationals
Found this on Expropriation, doesn't seem awful:
Article 10.13: Expropriation
251.No Party shall expropriate or nationalise a covered investment either directly or through measures equivalent to expropriation or This Article shall be interpreted in accordance with Annex 10B (Expropriation).10-16 nationalisation (hereinafter referred to as “expropriation” in this Chapter), except:
(a)for a public purpose;
(b)in a non-discriminatory manner;
(c )on payment of compensation in accordance with paragraphs 2 and 3; and
(d)in accordance with due process of law.
These exceptions cover everything about Chinese method of nationalization.
Yes, exactly this. Extremely common in trade agreements and well established customary law.
...realy this? Are you trolling? This is a rule of law clause, like in all trade agreements.
Thanks, you're doing great work here.
I've had to look at WTO documents for Mexico one time and I can't think of how much time it took me to finish
Doesn't really matter. We're past the runaway point on global warming. This will all be moot in a century or two and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
It's my bedtime soon. Thank you all for commenting, thanks especially for user Civility for prying deep into the document.
I know this thing is brand new, and we all have our takes on free trade and productive forces yadda yadda.
For the record I live in that part of the world, I'm not a yank. I personally will have to keep tabs on this thing.
I'm enjoying this thread full of airmchair lawyers, good post OP
Yeah China is just capitalism.
They have some safeguards the US won’t accept, but overall it’s just capitalism.
While you are correct to be wary of Western propaganda against China re: Xinjiang (particularly as Xi has himself noted that he is borrowing US-led frameworks on the 'War on Terror' anyway), I wouldn't use 'diplomats from Muslim-majority countries' as proof of anything. Most Muslim countries also stood by India when they removed the special legal protections from Kashmir and intensified their military occupation. Muslim countries are not somehow bound by oath to protect the ummah, I mean they will sell out for the sake of getting access to a big market (like India, China, etc) if they need to without any hesitation. Any insistence that because Muslim officials say something is okay it must be is I think built on the sadly outdated notion that religious solidarity is going to trump socio-economic gain.
![[Important] We need to start talking about the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership soon](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/CEsdhjxYVd.jpg){kind=link}
