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Trump's statement appeared to open the way for China to assume
the United States' leadership mantle on trade and diplomacy in
Asia. The Republican termed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)
"a potential disaster for our country".
China, Japan and South Korea are already in the initial stages
of discussing a trilateral trade deal, and Beijing has been
pushing its own limited Asian regional trade pact that excludes
Washington for the past five years.
Asked whether China would be a beneficiary of the U.S.
withdrawal from TPP, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said
China had an open attitude towards any arrangement that promoted
regional free trade.
China is willing, with other parties, to promote the economic
integration process in the Asia-Pacific for the benefit of the
peoples of the region, he told a daily news briefing.
"I think that in this process, China will make its own
contribution and play its own role," Geng added, without
elaborating.
Japan and Australia, Washington's closest allies in Asia,
pledged after Trump's announcement to push ahead without the
United States, although removing the largest market for goods
and services would shrink it dramatically.
China has pushed its own Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP), which notably excludes the United States. It
is a more traditional trade agreement, involving cutting tariffs
rather than opening up economies and setting labor and
environmental standards as TPP would.
China has tended to see the TPP as part of U.S. efforts to
exclude it from setting global rules and to rally others against
Beijing.
Geng said all parties in the Asia-Pacific should have a say in
regional matters, rather than just one country setting the
agenda, and repeated that the issue of free trade should not be
politicized.
"That is to say, we hope that all sides do not consider or
interpret free trade arrangements from the perspective of
geopolitics," he added.
"There is no zero sum relationship between the various free
trade arrangements, and they should not be mutually
exclusionary, but rather should promote each other."
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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