As Trump disses TPP, China says to 'play
role' in Asia-Pacific integration
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[November 23, 2016]
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will "play
its role" in promoting economic integration in the Asia-Pacific, the
foreign ministry said on Wednesday, after U.S. President-elect Donald
Trump said he would kill an ambitious regional trade pact.
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.
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"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.
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![](../images/112316pics/news_n23.jpg)
President elect Donald Trump reacts to a crowd gathered in the lobby
of the New York Times building after a meeting in New York, U.S.,
November 22, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
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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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