 Welcome to everyone. I'm very happy about everyone who has joined us. A warm welcome to our audience in China, in Vietnam, in Australia, in Europe and from everywhere else where people might be joining us at the moment. I am very pleased to welcome our distinguished speakers for today. A very warm welcome to Professor Xiumei from the Shanghai International Studies University. A warm welcome to Professor Tui Zhuang from the Ho Chi Minh University of Law and a very warm welcome to Kate Leppin from Public Services International. As Florian already mentioned, my name is Nadja, Nadja Dorschner, I work in the Asia unit of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Berlin and I would just like to give you a few introductory remarks on Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung as an organisation. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung is one of six political foundations in Germany. It was founded in 1990 and it is affiliated to the party Die Linke, which means in English the left in Germany. The main aims of our organisation are to provide political education, to provide discussion forums for critical thinking and for political alternatives and we also aim to provide research facilities for progressive social analysis and for critical analysis of current capitalism. We all speak to you, like Florian and me and other people who have joined in the organisation of this webinar as members of the Centre for International Dialogue and Cooperation, which is the biggest department of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and it is the department which contains a network of 25 offices around the world and these offices operate in more than 80 countries. And today, yes, this is a co-operation, this webinar series is a co-operation of our offices in Brussels, Beijing, Hanoi and the Asia unit in Berlin and yes, the international department of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung wants to support emancipatory actors around the world and wants to especially contribute to equal exchange and to form a global network between activists, emancipatory actors and people who want to discuss with us on social justice, on social ecological transformation and how to get to a world with more international solidarity. Today we are welcoming you for this webinar on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and with these webinars, so there's one today and there will be another one on the 8th of July and we would also be very happy to welcome you for the next session of this webinar series. We are hosting these webinars because we want to provide a better understanding of what the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement is, what its scope is, what its nature is, how it can be understood, what it means for the countries in the region and what will be the social, economic and geopolitical implications. So today we are concentrating on the status quo of the agreement, we will learn how it is structured and what it contains and what the expected implications are especially socially and economically and in our next session on the 8th of July we will focus more on the geopolitical implications. And with this said, I want only to add one last thing, if you want to participate in this webinar you can ask questions, there's a Q&A box for that, so we would be very happy to interact with you because we all know that in these online formats it is a little bit sad that we don't really see each other, we don't really know who's there and what the mood is. So yeah, please use the chat and especially the Q&A box to interact with us and yeah, I wish you an interesting and engaged exchange. And with this I give back to Florian, thank you. Thank you very much Natja. So let's start with our webinar on the RCP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. I give you some basic information, let me see what I got here. The RCP was, the negotiations were launched in 2012 at an Asian summit, and it includes 10 Asian countries, so the Asian region. Plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. This means that we're dealing with an economic region that covers almost one third of the world's population, and also almost one third of the global GDP, which means that it's quite big, if not the biggest trade agreement around. Let's see what else we got. Well, interesting is that there's another agreement which is called CPTPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which covers a lot of countries which are also in the RCP. Why am I saying that? Because the CPTPP is kind of a revival of another agreement which had been negotiated, the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which included the United States, who withdraw from that agreement in 2016. And so we can say that there was a period where there was some kind of competition on how to set trade rules in a certain world region. Because out of the 11 signatories of CPTPP, seven are part of RCEP. Now CPTPP only covers 6.6% of the world population and about 15% of global GDP. So in terms of that, it is much smaller than RCEP, and we will go later and probably in the next seminar, more into the geopolitical details of what that means. But of course, the main question is who is going to set in trade rules in the region. Now what we learn from the CPTPP is that's a very far reaching agreement. What I tried to learn about the RCEP, from what I understand there's very contradictory opinions on the depth of its chapters, how far it goes behind the border liberalization issues, so everything which is not classic trade issues. There's people who are saying it's like, it will have an enormous impact, there's others who say, oh no, no, no, this is quite lightweight, it doesn't go far beyond WTO provisions and so on. But I'm not the expert, so I'm only raising these questions, and I hope our experts today will clarify all these issues, some of the issues I mentioned so far. So our first expert is Professor Schumey, who is, hi, welcome Professor. Hi, thank you, can I share the screen. Yeah, I just wanted to introduce you for one minute and I want to keep to keep your wonderful screen of the Golden Gate Bridge for that moment, even though I guess you're not based in San Francisco but in Shanghai because you are Professor at the School of Economics and Finance at the Shanghai International Studies University. And we are looking forward to your presentation, which we look into what's really in the 20 chapters of the RCEP, and also what does China expect from the RCEP. So, please Professor, share your screen and let's start. Okay, thank you, Chair. I'll share the screen first. Can you set? Yes. Yes, we can see it. Yes. So, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure. Thank you very much for your invitation. So, start with what is the RCEP. Many talk about the most important chapters of RCEP and the achievements, as well as the limitations of RCEP. So, I think we all know that. Yes. What do we expect from RCEP for the region and for China so I'll talk many about that first. Generally speaking, I think in the coming decades, the RCEP is hopeful to become an important force for economic growth in this region. In short run, the RCEP conduces to supporting all countries in this region to jointly combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and to promoting regional economic recovery through inclusive and sustainable development. In long run, the RCEP will pave the way for deeper economic integration among our members. In addition, I think the members can use its provisions as a springboard to deeper economic reforms and improve the competitiveness of our industries. So, so as to facilitate all the member countries to achieve mutual benefit and win win situation. So for China, generally speaking, as we all know, China has close economic ties with other RCEP member countries. And China's total trade with other RCEP member countries accounted for 31.2% of its total foreign trade in the year 2019. So the opening up layout of this FTA framework or network is conducive to promoting China's new dual circulation development pattern. As we all know, this pattern, this new pattern is centered on the domestic economy and aims at better integrating domestic economy with the global economy. So it will not only benefit the Chinese economy, but also create more growth opportunities for countries across the world. And for the region, I think the successful signing of this agreement reflects the characteristics and also vitality of regional economic integration in Asia. So it is a milestone in the process of Asia regional integration and also a new demonstration of global economic cooperation from the general, from the regional level. So this is the general introduction. And in order for us to see clearly what is actually in RCEP, as the chair just mentioned, there are some member states which are overlapping overlapping. So I actually put the legal text as we all know has 20 chapters in the RCEP. So I compare these 20 chapters with the 30 chapters in the CPTPP. As you could see for the black ones, the black words meaning they're the same for the words in blue. I just want to denote the diction of the words, the choices are slightly different. For the ones which are in red, as we can see all together, there are eight chapters in CPTPP. This is the chapter four textiles and apparel groups, and then chapter 17 state owned enterprises and designated monopolies. And the following is chapter 19 lever, chapter 20 environment, chapter 22 competitiveness and business facilitation, chapter 23 development, chapter 25 regulatory coherence and then last one is chapter 26, transparency and anti corruption. These eight chapters are actually missing RCEP. So this is one difference if we compare the chapters in RCEP with those in CPTPP. And the second different differences are in blue ones I leveled. So if we go one by one, as you can see, in chapter two, in RCEP, like it's named as trading goods, but in CPTPP is called national treatment and market accessible goals. But if we read closely we'll find article 2.3 in RCEP actually deals with national treatment. Let's just move on to chapter three, rows of origin, not in the RCEP. And in CPTPP, there is also the origin procedures, which is not there in the RCEP. And then there are another very big difference that's the chapter 18 CPTPP that is technical barriers to trade. And in RCEP, that's in chapter six, which is called standards technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures. And this, as we all know, we usually call them technical measures to trade. So measures may not become barriers. So there are slight differences here. And then there is another difference. As you could see, we mentioned there were eight chapters, which were actually which are missing RCEP. And there's another very important difference is for trade and service in CPTPP. There are three chapters that is chapter 10 cross board trading services and chapter 11 financial services, and then chapter 13 telecommunications. But we'll find in RCEP, there is only one chapter that is chapter eight, which is named as trading services, but there are three annexes. And then there is annex 8A, not financial services, and then annex 8C, not professional services, and then there is annex 8B telecommunications services, which is actually separate chapter, chapter 13 in CPTPP. And if we continue, we can find, finally, there's another difference. That's chapter 27. In the CPTPP, it's named as administrative and institutional provisions. If we compare in great detail, we'll find in CPTPP there is a particular administration of a dispute settlement proceedings. So when we compare the chapters in the RCEP with the CPTPP, and whereas we have seen the differences in general, and here again there are four annexes in the RCEP. So, I will, after comparison of the chapters, I will try to talk about the features of the RCEP so that you will understand the achievements and also limitations of RCEP. So I think the first feature would be largest, as the chair already mentioned in terms of population, economy, and also trade. RCEP is the biggest free trade agreement in the world now. It has a consumer market for some 2.2 billion people, and also it has the greatest development potentials as well. So that's the first feature, and the second feature would be comprehensive. And as we've seen, all together 20 chapters and four appendices, and so it is relatively comprehensive in coverage. So that's the, actually, main areas that the ASIM plus one FTS did not cover, actually. So there are specific provisions for trading goods, those traditional ones, and also there are some other ones in services, and some ones we could say at a rather higher level. There is a particular the specification for the e-commerce. And then another thing I think we should mention that the number of sectors opened by the RCEP evidence has been increased if we compare it to the basis of the WTO. And I just to give one example about China, when China entered WTO, we actually opened 100 service sectors. And this time, China has 22 new sectors, including research and development management consulting services, and also the ones related to manufacturing and air transport, and loosens our restrictions on foreign ownership in 37 sectors, including finance, law, construction, and ocean shipping. So there is also a serious exploration on high standard roads. So this is the, actually, the second feature, comprehensive. And I think the third feature, as we all agree, is inclusive, because we all know, as far as the economic system is concerned, the levels of development, and also size and scale of all the signatures of RCEP are taking into consideration. So we will find great differences between them. So, for example, we have major economies like China and Japan, and also underdeveloped ones like Cambodia and Los. So RCEP borrows successful experiences of East Asia cooperation. So, for trying to ground in less developed countries, certain grounds periods or exception clauses. For example, for tariff cuts, it provides grounds period of up to 20 years for some of the products to subject to zero tariffs. And also it grounds a special preferential treatment to developing country members. For example, we will see in the chapter on economic and technical corporations. It provides capacity building and also technical assistance. So that's the third characteristics. And I think that the false one should be open. It is open for accession by any economy, 18 miles after its entry into force and also for India as a regional negotiating state. The RCEP offers the India fast-track action. That means it doesn't have to wait. It can rejoin on the data of entry into force of the agreement. So, this is another feature. I think the fifth feature I've just mentioned the difference, okay, in terms of economic aggression we mentioned. And also in terms of capital GDP, for example, Australia has more than 60,000 US dollars and Myanmar and Cambodia only have just more than 1000 US dollars. So, going into the huge gap and also the different interests demands various levels of acceptable opening conditions. So, these all have been taken into consideration during negotiation. I think the next feature would be difficult because of the differences among the signatory countries. So, the negotiations were difficult. It took about eight years, as we all know. And during the negotiation, all the member states have tried our best. For example, China, we have actively promoted a high level opening up to the outside world, providing solid domestic assistance for RCEP negotiations. And the last feature would be flexible. And for flexibility, I think the first thing we can see is that in RCEP, the tariff concessions exclude products considered sensitive, particularly in the agricultural sectors. Another flexibility we can see from schedules for trading goods. For some members, they just have one tariff schedule that is on offer for all the other members. And for the others, they have some variations in their schedules. So, these actually because of the different levels of economic development. So, there is the flexibility also manifests in the implementation of the earlier of the certain provisions, which I mentioned earlier. And I here I'll just cite Cambodia as an example, because Cambodia is a substantial adjustment to come into compliance with a new asset growth. So, Cambodia asked and also given received extension of five years to implement provisions like application of digital technology at customs. And the same five year extension of the time for introducing a range of new rules to manage express shipments, etc. So, to summarize, I think there are several key breakthroughs. The first breakthrough, they are secretary forms. That's the first time forms the tri-lateral free trade agreements between China, South Korea, and Japan. And the second breakthrough would be the harmonization of the roles of region among the signatories. RCEP establishes common roles of region so that a single certificate of region could be used throughout the whole zone. And also it establish a flexible rules of origin, for example, for some goods, if they reach the regional value content of 40%, and that good could be considered as originating in the region. So, this would allow the companies to diversify and also optimize their supply chains. If you say for the breakthrough, I think another breakthrough would be the e-commerce roles, which actually incorporate into the agreement. Especially, this is the, in this region's first time's consensus on some of the key issues in this respect, including the cross-fold information transmission, and also information storage online consumer protection, etc. But of course, at the very beginning when we compare the chapters in the CBTPP with those in RCEP. We could see, even though these two agreements are all make free trade agreements, but there are differences. The first, I think, we all agree is the degree of liberalization within RCEP is not as deep as in CBTPP, and the coverage is less comprehensive. And of course, it's less ambitious, as we mentioned that it does not include a chapter on the environment, labor and state owned or state owned enterprises. And another presenter will talk about investment, as we'll see provisions on investment, intellectual property and also e-commerce are considered also less extensive or in-depth than those in the CBTPP. And if, generally speaking, RCEP is expected to eliminate approximately 90% of the tariffs on those traded between the member countries after more than 20 years of liberalization. And if we compare that to the CBTPP, the proportion of the tariffs eliminated by the CBTPP will be approximately 98% once it is fully implemented. Finally, I would like to summarize, unlike CBTPP, RCEP recognized that one size does not fit for all. So there are some chapters which are missing, and also there are some flexibilities, for example, in finding roads of region. But maybe the other side of the cone is the RCEP recognized that at least may prevent the future trade frictions, as we hope. That's all, yeah, back to you. Thank you so much Professor Schumey for this very comprehensive and precise analysis of the chapters included in the RCEP, and also to give some kind of interpretation also in terms of difficulties and differences between economies that are included in this free trade agreement and on the depth of trade liberalization in comparison to CBTPP. That was a very informative presentation. Thank you so much. Now, we would have some time, if there are any questions for clarification, if something has not been understood well, that would be now the time. To proceed the question we received so far, more going into depth, and this we will do after the three presentations. So I guess we will head on for the second presentation. And after the second presentation there will be also a short slot if you have any questions of understanding. Please feel free to put them already into the chat or in the Q&A box. We will continue with Professor Tran. Can you, yeah, no I can see you wonderful. So now we got this general overview and also the perspective of China on the RCEP. I'm very eager to learn about another perspective on the same agreement from another member state, which is Vietnam. Professor Tran is based in Ho Chi Minh City, where she is working on the Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, and she's also specialized in trade law. So there's a Jamaican singer who said in Babylon we move one step forward and two step backwards. In RCEP, does Vietnam move one step forward and two step backwards, or one step backwards but two step forwards. There was a bit of interpretation of what's in RCEP for Vietnam. You need to turn on your microphone. We cannot hear you yet, Professor Tran. There seems to be some problems with the mic. You're still muted. Yes, now. Hello. Yeah, you can hear me now. Wonderful, yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Horn, for your wonderful presentation, introductions and greetings to all from Ho Chi Minh City. It is 3.36 p.m. now. The weather is good. But because of COVID-19, we are in a mode of social distancing, so I'm very excited to meet with you via this webinar. Thank you to ILS teams from Germany, from Luxembourg and from South East Asia. I see that Philippe Degenhardt is there. Happy to see you. Who organize and facilitate this international scientific exchange. So I will share my screen with you. Okay. Yes, it's fine. So the organizer of this program asked me to reply to the question of what is in the RCEP and the perspective of a Vietnamese lawyer. So in order to answer this question, I will present at first some general perspective on RCEP trade and non-trade provisions. In particular, those related to laborized environment protections. And after that, I will mention very briefly some implications of this agreement for Vietnam, which is the developing countries of which the economy is much smaller than that of China. But which is a member of the two new general free trade agreements which are CPTPP and EVFTA. So EVFTA is the European Union Vietnam free trade agreement. So, in order to answer to this question, we'll begin with trade liberalization first. I've learned from Professor Chen that RCEP is a very comprehensive and huge agreement, which covers a lot of fields. I will not repeat her analysis which are already very comprehensive, but I just want to highlight one point that we all know that on the one hand Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, are the members of the economic agreements with ASEAN under the form of ASEAN plus one FTA. And on the other hand, all the RCEP members are already WTO members. So why RCEP should be established? One of the reasons is that the RCEP is not a simple repetition of WTO commitments or ASEAN plus one FTA commitments. The reports from ASEAN Secretariat and Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade demonstrates that there are many RCEP provisions that go further than those of the WTO or ASEAN plus one FTA. And the typical provisions of this kind can be found in Chapter 4, Chapter 8, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 16 of the RCEP. So it is reasonable to conclude that the RCEP represents a step forward in regional trade liberalisation. Now we will move to the RCEP non-trade provisions in particular labour rights and environment protection provisions. We all know that the trade and investment liberalisations imply not only positive, but also negative social environmental impact. Therefore, the new generation free trade agreements often contain provisions which prevent the race, the bottom between parties of FTAs in order to protect labour rights and environment. We stated that because of its size and its coverage, the RCEP will impact a greater number of people than any previously signed FTAs. So it is interesting to make an inventory of most important RCEP provisions to see how trade liberalisation, labour rights protection and environmental preservation are harmonised in the framework of this document. So in order to obtain this goal, I will first of the RCEP and secondly I will examine some specific provisions related to labour rights and environmental protection. The general principles and objectives of an agreement give indication of its members' will, intentions. That is why they are very important because they provide context to interpret parties' rights and obligations which are prescribed in specific provisions of an agreement. In the case of the RCEP, the general principles and objectives can be found in guiding principles and objectives for negotiating the RCEP in the preamble of the agreement in chapter one related to initial provisions and chapter 20 on final provisions. So for those who are pro-environmental and labour rights sections, the reading of these provisions may make them feel very discouraged, why? Because the reference to sustainable development can be found only once in the preamble. It mentions the interdependence between three pillars of sustainable development, however, ultimately it is to hide like the role of economic partnership. When reading the guiding principles and objectives for negotiating, we can easily see that the social environment issues do not interest the negotiator of the agreement. The objectives of negotiator, since as you see, are purely economic, and the principles of negotiating focus on trade and investment liberation. Similarly, NATO chapter one, not chapter 20, contains any provision related to social environment concerns. So we can conclude that from the beginning, the negotiator of the RCEP do not pay much attention to social and environmental issues. The specific provisions addressing social and environmental concerns can be found in different chapters of the RCEP, but we focus mostly on chapter 10 on investment. Why? Because it is often a lake that investment often risks to imply the abuse of human rights and environment. So it is interesting to see how the RCEP negotiators attempt to limit this risk. So we also analyze chapter 17 general provisions and exceptions, because the exceptions may offer to governments freedom to take care of social environmental interest in context of trade and investment liberalization. So chapter 10 investment contains at least five elements, which gives opportunities to governments to establish and implement human rights and environmental protection measures. Firstly, this chapter shall not apply to governmental procurements, subsidized or grants provided by a party, services applied in the exercise of governmental authority. So this limited scope of the chapter will give the governments more freedom to procure goods and services, to subsidize companies, to supply services in fields necessary for social and environmental interest. Secondly, the most favored nascent treatment clause does not encompass any international dispute resolution procedures or mechanism under our existing or future international procurements. So this clause will prevent the investors from bringing cases against governments members of the RCEP while using ISDS mechanism in other IAA of which they are members. In this regard, we can note as Mr. Hong has just mentioned, this chapter 10 hasn't imposed yet an ISDS mechanism, and this mechanism will be considered during the discussions organized no later than two years after entering to force of the agreement. So this will give the opportunities for the public to put pressures and for governments to calculate the pros and cons of integrating an ISDS mechanism in this agreement. Thirdly, this chapter provides for the exceptions to the rules on prohibition of performance requirements. So it will give the basically the government the freedom to apply measures to require investment in certain fields to promote training and employment workers to promote research and development to facilitate protection of public health. Fourthly, this chapter gives the whole stage opportunities to influence the composition of foreign invested companies, boards of directors. And fifthly, it provides for exceptions to rules or expropriations so it enables governments to apply measures to protect public interest in particular to protect the public health. To sum up chapter 10 gives governments some freedom to elaborate and apply measures to protect public interest. And the most remarkable point for me is the absence of the ISDS mechanism. And this freedom of governments is reinforced by article 17.11, which excludes the applications of dispute settlement mechanisms to governments approval or admission of foreign investment proposals. This will enable governments' refusals of foreign investment proposals, which are in conflict with social or environmental interests. So it looks very encouraging, but when we do some more researches, we see that this freedom is not new in comparison with what is provided in CP, TDP or in EV FTA, which Vietnam is a member. Besides, it is necessary to note that nothing in this chapter mentions directly the protection of labour rights on environment. Why in the CP, TDP and EV FTA, we all know that they have entire chapters on labour, on environment or on trade and sustainable development. Chapter 17 contains some clauses related to environmental and human rights protection too. However, in general, we can state that they are similar to or less ambitious than those in the CP, TDP or the EV FTA. In brief, the RCEP is a newer FTA than the CP, TDP and EV FTA. However, its approach to labour rights and environmental protections issues is much more traditional than CP, TDP and EV FTA. And that is the reason why it is criticized for ignoring environmental and labour rights protections. And from this perspective, it represents a step backward in comparison with CP, TDP and EV FTA. So now I will move briefly to implications for Vietnam. As Mr. Hoang mentioned, the RCEP is a huge agreement which covers one-third of the world population and one-third of the global GDP. So for Vietnam, the RCEP will facilitate access to this huge market and help it to involve more deeply in regional value chain. What I would like to highlight here is the RCEP cumulative rules of origin. What does cumulative rules of origin mean? It means that as long as RCEP member processes materials originating from other RCEP countries, materials can be regarded as originating from processing countries. So consequently, the goods which before would not have been considered as originating goods will have more chance to be regarded as originating goods after RCEP entry into force. So they can enjoy preferential tariffs more easily. This will mean a lot for Vietnam who imports a lot of raw materials from China and other RCEP countries. But it is also very good for China who will export more raw materials. From my perspective, the participation to the RCEP will not create a lot of legal burdens for Vietnam. Because in majority of cases, Vietnam's trade liberalization commitment in RCEP are not higher than those in Asian plus FTAs. Besides the labor rights and environmental protection commitment in RCEP are much lower than those in CP, TPP and EVFTA. We can recall that while participating in CP, TPP and EVFTA, Vietnam had to amend its labor code and its environmental protection law. This is not the case when it participates to RCEP. So it is reasonable to assume that in the short term, Vietnam will benefit from the market access to RCEP members at a low legal cost. However, from the economic point of view, I think that it will entail some costs for Vietnam. Following amendments of labor, environmental protection laws, thanks to the participation to CP, TPP and EVFTA, Vietnam's enterprises will be bound by more rigorous labor rights and environmental standards. But they will have to face the competitions from RCEP members, companies which are not bound by the similar standards. And besides the branches of production of Vietnam will have to face more competitions from RCEP members who also benefit from cumulative rules of origin. Vietnam will also need to select good foreign investment projects while harmonizing investment promotions and public interest protections. And this is another challenge for Vietnam where participating to the RCEP. So that is the end of my presentation. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for your presentation, Professor Tran. I think we all understood very well there was some kind of background noise, but generally it went all well. I think if there would have been a problem, someone would have mentioned it in the chat. So there's no questions of understanding. Thank you so much for elaborating even more on some crucial chapters of the RCEP. Especially you mentioned or the absence probably of some crucial chapters with where you mentioned the environmental provisions and labor rights, which you labeled a step backward. But also the absence of investor to state dispute settlement provisions, which you labeled a step forward, but with the opportunity or with the danger to move two steps backward again because then there's still a door open to include this. And you mentioned the dangers from the Vietnam perspective on public interest because of competition with other countries from the region and the difference of standards. And you also mentioned trade and services, which has been already mentioned by Professor Choumé, which is an obviously an important part of the agreement. And now we want to look more also, especially into this service chapter. Therefore, we have from public services international the confederation of service trade unions. Kate Lapin who is PSI regional secretary for Asia and the Pacific region. Welcome Kate. Thank you. And thanks to all at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung for inviting me. This is a campaign that PSI has been part of in the region with our affiliates for a number of years, and we've worked with all the other global union federations in the Asia Pacific region. And so our starting point I should say is a bit different than the first two presentations which is that we have been campaigning against this trade agreement and other trade agreements. And we don't see trade agreements in general as progress for workers. But for PSI's perspective, we also have deep concerns about the impact on access to public services and the increasing role that trade agreements provide to large corporations. So the growth in corporate power and the growth in inequality that trade agreements support. I will share my screen and try and provide a bit of a presentation but I'm going to skip over in the interests of time some of this. I'm sure we'd all like to have some discussions with people and opportunity to ask questions. And because the other speakers have already explained a bit of the content. I am going to provide a little bit more of a critique on what I think are the problems and I acknowledge some of what's been said around that the RCEP is a has more flexibility. And the CPTPP in terms of developing countries it acknowledges the differences between the economies of the state of different economies and that's a good thing. And it has, I guess, less deep liberalization than the CPTPP which is also a good thing. In general, I, we can't say that the RCEP represents progress in fact it represents a deepening of neoliberalism particularly in the countries that didn't have significant trade agreements of that nature in the past. I just thought I first thing here the first key point is answering the question that you asked earlier, which was who sets the rules and that's something that has always been suggested that the RCEP was about China and the ASEAN setting rules and that the CPTPP was about the US and its allies setting rules out. And it may be that they both had interests in opening up other markets but the truth is that it's capital that sets is setting these rules. I think it's in the interests of countries obviously we know that the US withdrew, but we shouldn't be misled by this idea that these are competing rules. These are pretty much the same rules with slight differences that have been some of which have been outlawed before with the other speakers, but they are the same rules. It's capital who sets these rules. In fact, these rules have all been drafted by big big corporations representatives law firms that represent them or chambers of commerce. So it's not about particular sovereign rules. It's about capital and the extent to which capital can influence countries. So obviously we are deeply worried about there's been some discussion about the representation of Labor chapters but I don't think that's the extent to we know that in the past Labor chapters have not been able to protect workers and that there are a whole range of ways that workers and communities suffer. And I'll go through a little bit more some of those but I wanted to also stress that this has been negotiated secretly. This is anti democratic of course people should have a say in what these major decisions about how the economy operates but instead they are all secret we only ever know what's going on if we get leaks. And we have to sometimes make assumptions about what's in there until they're fine until they're signed and I mean that's that's ridiculous that our governments are making decisions without consulting with us. And that we should know whether they're in the interests of people by the response of corporations and have who have welcomed the asset and the TPP although the corporations have said themselves, they would like the asset to go further. I just wanted to make the point and this is research we are currently undertaking and we'll have available later is that we most countries have had to breach these rules as a result of COVID. Most countries have had to take action either by stopping exports they needed. Obviously from closing down borders for by some in some cases taking over private private enterprise to be able to produce public services. There's a whole range of ways during COVID that actually trade rules have been a hindrance to the capacity of governments to act when there's a major risk a major health risk but of course that could apply to other major risks. Now I'm going to flick through these because they have been spoken about. I just wanted to share this which is some research that had the UN mission on trade and development that the UN body that's responsible for really looking at the development issues of developing countries. I did in looking at the economic impacts because we always are told that these trade agreements are going to increase largely increase economic activity and therefore increased jobs but this is not the case and we know and the research they have done has shown that the largest increases are in those developed economies. Or in China and so here you see that the blue is the ASEAN countries and the orange is the non ASEAN countries and that the balance of trade in ASEAN countries goes backwards and that the change in exports is minimal. There is an increasing change in exports but it is largely outweighed by the change in imports and so their balance of trade will go down in those. Most of the ASEAN countries of course some of the developed economies like Singapore and Malaysia might fare better and that's part of this next slide and I'm not going to go into detail I can share it if you like, but this shows who wins and who loses. And even though obviously some of this may not happen immediately because as was discussed there's a graduated process for economies that might be developing economies might happen over five, six years, but eventually they do have to reduce all their tariffs on the designated areas and will be flooded in most cases with imports. But we also should consider what this means for other countries. So for example, if there's a gain in Vietnam there's a likely loss in Bangladesh because one large part of their economy is textiles and so a projected growth in the textile industry in Vietnam for example or Cambodia is not because there's a growth in people wanting to buy textiles but because it will be a shift in where that takes place because there will be lower costs for multinationals and those lower costs might be tariffs but the obvious other way to attract lower to have lower costs is to drive down wages and conditions. Now I as you said the first services chapter is an important one for us and this is one of the reasons that we are really concerned about all trade agreements is the way that they're designed to open up our public services to foreign investors and to secure privatisation and not allow governments to take action to return privatised public services to the public when they fail. And we know that's happening in the region for example in Indonesia there's been a court decision that the privatised water is a human rights violation and should return to the public. But there's you know foreign investors there who are will threaten to take action on because of you know trade protection. And so there's a whole, there is this provision in the RCEP and it's strange it has actually a two pronged approach which is called a negative list and a positive list, which is a slightly unusual for a trade agreement. Normally you would have one or the other, but in this particular trade agreement. The countries couldn't agree and what this means is that some countries list which industries are open to foreign investors and where governments will no longer have the capacity to preserve those industries for for local investors or for public you know only for publicly public services and that the public funding will only be restricted to national. And this is the positive list when you can say we will open up this industry or that industry we will liberalise this industry or that industry where foreign investors can be treated as if they're a national investor. Or there's a negative list which says these are the ones that we reserve, but everything else everything else even things you haven't thought of yet, things that might come in in the future can are open and that negative list really is effectively opens up everything because things can be categorised in many different ways. And so you'll see the countries in the negative list are mostly the countries that have already opened up through the TPP, the CPTPP, apart from Indonesia and that's a deep concern that Indonesia has decided to put itself there in the negative list. And the others in the RCEP are on the positive list that means they've had to say which which industries and each one is different and that can be a good thing so that not every country opens up the same. Some can you know really restrict the number. But again there'll be pressure, there is pressure within the agreement to revisit this and open it both to further industries and also to reconsider the negative list approach. The only country there surprising to see both well actually there's two countries there that are part of the CPTPP. And that is Vietnam and New Zealand so they have not, you know, it would have been good if they could get the negative list in the CPTPP. So this is really important because of course, a lot of what we've seen in other countries is that a large amount of cases that are brought to ISDS relate to the services chapter, and that the corporations are trying around the world to expand these rules. They had tried through the trading services agreement, and that's now being revisited at the World Trade Organization, a number of countries are trying to get those rules in there. And lots of civil societies workers, people that depend on public services around the world, have already fought those off once. Now they keep coming back through trade agreements bilaterals and now the World Trade Organization. Quickly moving on, I had mentioned that I've written in the past about the impact of these trade agreements on women's human rights. And it is the people in communities that most depend on public services that really suffer because as we know privatization is has impacted mostly on people who can't afford to pay for services and privatization leads also to a reduction in the quality of services and even the UN special repertoire on poverty has found that privatization is systemic, systemically eliminates human rights. And as it does that it increases the burden of care on women and that's also in well documented that privatization then means that communities families have to rely on women where they should be relying on public services. And that's obviously very critical for public health we've seen during this public this emergency that in the region that countries have privatized their health have done significantly worse than those who have been able to have a decent public health system. There's other elements that I've written about before that relate to gender one is about the e-commerce provisions and the way that they protect corporations from having their algorithms for example these scrutinized that but also in this case that governments had been discussing and there is reference to procurement policies. And what was interesting here is that India did cite this as one of the reasons that they were thinking of not joining and ultimately they did leave the RCEP and I've got that quite there on the screen which is that the government acknowledged that they did not want to surrender the right to support for example women in their procurement policy they wanted to retain the right to be able to procure from communities they wanted to support. And I think that's a really important policy I know that in Vietnam and other countries there's also pro women procurement and that can be surrendered through these agreements. I think it's already been mentioned that this that the RCEP does not currently have an investor state dispute settlement procedure. It has a state to state dispute settlement procedure, which is more like the WTO. But what we should remember is that states can sometimes act as corporations when corporations have increasing influence and this is what trade agreements do. The trade agreements give the right to corporations to be consulted in the development of policy. This is under transparency provisions which is ironic you know we think transparency is actually about protecting democracy but in this case it's about protecting the right of corporates to influence policy. And take for example that in Australia was sued by Philip Morris using trade agreements through an ISDS case for its cigarette labeling when that was unsuccessful in its ISDS. Indonesia used a state to state dispute settlement on behalf of those companies for the same to take the same action. So you can often find that states are willing to take action for the you know for those corporations, whether they be large donors or just key influences in the country of particularly when they're a large part of the industry as tobacco is a large part of Indonesia's industries. So at the moment as was suggested earlier this will be reviewed and that remains a risk and a risk that we will be highlighting with our members to make sure doesn't get introduced into the asset is the introduction of investor state dispute settlements. And lastly just so that we do have some time to discuss this a little more. I just wanted to make the point that the as others have said this is this agreement was a long time in the negotiations it was worse. From what we know of course as I said it was secretive but from the draft from the league documents, there were a lot of chapters that were very exactly the same as the chapters in TPP. There were drafted for other agreements and that was what constantly happens the same language gets recirculated time and again. But it was through the mobilization of social movements in the region, but it was been able to be improved to some extent and importantly for India to withdraw and here we have a group in the region called unions. We work together on trade justice and we work together on trade related issues, which includes at the moment things like having the World Trade Organization provide a waiver for in the to allow for vaccines and other and other medicines, not to be having provisions applied so that we can have generics. But those are the kind of things I think we all need to be involved with to really protect both the public policy space workers and communities from these extremely dangerous trade agreements. And I'll leave it there and happy to ask to answer any questions that the audience might have. Thank you so much Kate for this wonderful presentation, which also added a lot from another perspective, the perspective of the workers. So there's still about 15 to 20 minutes now for question and answers. And yeah, I will, however, summarize into sentences what Kate said I tried. Basically, she said the rules are set by capital. But then she also said that states can operate as corporations. And that of course labor chapters have not been able to to protect workers but it's organized work who is protecting workers like always. She said, and that study showed that there's this gains but there's also this discrepancies there's winners and losers on the one side, the Asian countries on the other side China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. This is being shown in a shift in the textile industry and the production sites, but also we can mention the automotive industry where there are shifts predicted by CG modeling. So, and then the thing about the positive list and negative list and the danger of negative lists that they may not cover yet things that come up future technologies or fields of trade. Yeah, that's basically it and for the questions I would like to to drop in one to questions for all and then I will put also in the questions from the audience. The first one is referring to what also Kate said on on the sectorial shifts and so on. And I may ask all of you to to respond if you wish, because now we see there's winners and losers. But not only between nations but also within nations because if textile industry moves from one country to another, then you may have a lot of unemployed textile workers in one country so what is your answer to this and the second would be more because now within within the RCP signatories they are already another 27 PTAs and another 44 bilateral trade agreements, though there's a huge web of agreements interfering with each other or opposing each other maybe and so what does it mean for for the for global value chains or this this web of trade liberalization and the question, the real question would be because in the last year we saw the volatility of global value chains. So is this really the way to go or shouldn't we focus more on resilient production capacity capacities and economies. I put these questions and I will also now read all the other questions and then I will give space for speakers to respond. So there was a question from Jenny Simon, who would like to know more about the role technical standards have within RCP. In how far is the mutual recognition or even usage of specific technical standards part of the agreement. And other mechanisms or agreement to further negotiate the agreement in later points in time to perhaps integrate more sectors. She asks to elaborate more on the conflicts during the negotiations we already heard that India dropped out of the agreement. And what were the subjects of conflict. And this will be probably also be covered in our next seminar when we to look more into the geopolitical perspective. Jenny has a second question specifically for Professor Tran. Are there possibilities of governments to influence investment activities you mentioned chapter 10 something special of the RCP. I know I made a pronunciation mistake I hope you understand the question are there possibilities of comments to influence investment activities to mention. Or are similar options also part of the FDA so I hope you can read the question because I'm a bit lost. Then there's an anonymous person who asks about the financial service sector of India if any one of you could reply to this. And then there's Jenny again. Who wants to know from Kate if the negative list approach refers only to or she wants to know from all only to services or other sectors to. So I will start with Kate so we do in the in the inverse order of the presentations. I guess each one of you will have five minutes and then everything should be covered. Okay. Well yes I was only talking about the references to the negative positive lists in the services chapter but it really there is no limit to what you can imagine is counter to services I mean everything can actually really be regarded as a service obviously when it comes to tariffs. There's the goods chapters. There's a whole range of different annexes that detail which goods are referred to so yeah my my reference to the rich countries are on the negative and positive lists is relating to the services chapter and that's because it's to do with liberalization it's about you know these that it's not to do with tariffs it's around saying these industries will be those that we liberalize and where we treat foreign investors as if they're domestic. And that we won't provide you know and that we guarantee that this could mean for example, your government says we have a new service. That, or we have funding for a service that would normally go to a public corporation they need now to compete with private sector corporations who would be bidding for that as if they were a public sector corporation if they're not restricted. You have to restrict it or you have to treat foreign investors as if they were the same as a state owned enterprise. So the, I mean your broader question around is this the way to go. I mean that's the fundamental question. And I think really, we need to think we need we shouldn't be trying to amend these agreements. We need to really be thinking about what what it is that we want economies to do who do they serve. Are we trying to design economies purely for growth of capital and profit. Do we expect actually that economies that they're to serve our own of our community our prosperity and including the prosperity of course of the planet. And that's where these fail I mean there's no that there's an inherent contradiction in the idea that we need agreements to to foster growth of capital. And I think that we need better livelihoods for the people and the redistribution obviously with things like the sustainable development goals which are completely failing to be met in the region. Basically because of the growth of inequality and these trade trade agreements have always increased inequality they may have increased the size of economies in some cases although even that is debatable. We currently have done in every country that has embraced them is increased the level of inequality in the country and that inevitably means a decreasing democracy and that's something that's a huge deficit in our region is a large democratic deficit and that's not just about you know voting in governments that's about who gets to have a say in how how the economy is designed. I would say that some fundamentally the problem we need a better system one positive I guess a small positive is that there are now discussions around the world of other ways we can cooperate to address the problems that corporations are caused in the as they've grown and become multinationals that are able to apply the set and apply their own rules. For example, I think this move to have a global minimum corporate tax rate isn't is evidence that countries might be prioritising that we are the rules that corporations have said are really harming our capacity to provide for public services because they're not paying taxes you know they're designing themselves as multinationals to avoid national regulation. And that's so those kind of things are what we should be talking about how do we set a minimum. A decent corporate tax rate, we could do the same on wages how do we set a minimum regional wage floor, which has been discussed before in ASEAN about having a wage floor so that we're not looking at a race to the bottom so that you know corporations can't jump from a country to country because they can see that one country's offering lower wages and other countries offering tax breaks and other country promises they won't apply environmental regulations if they come to their country. What we're going to do away with this kind of harmful race to the bottom, and that's the kind of agreements I think we should be looking at is agreements that stop this, this, you know really harmful competition, rather than agreements that guarantee the continual race to the bottom. I'll leave though, I'll leave my comments there. Okay, for the comments. There's another question now but I, I don't want to, to, to take too much time from the other speakers. I guess colleagues Susanna Baria would like to know more about the UNCTAD study but maybe you can just share the link to the study in the, in the chat. There may be a executive summary or something where she can get the information she wants. And let's head over now to Professor Tran. It's, it's up to you now. Can you hear me. Actually, there's no. I was asking Professor Tran from from Ho Chi Minh City to speak but obviously she has some connections, connection problems. Can you hear me now. Yeah. Yeah. So, I, I see the questions from Jenny Simon, are the possibility of governments to influence investment activities Jill Manson in chapter 10, something special to your RCB or RCB options also part of other FTA. So thank you Jenny for this. One of these possibilities and not something special of the RCB. They also exist in other FTA in particular new generation free trade agreements like CP, TTP and EVFTA. So that's the reason why I say that the RCB represents a step backwards in comparison to CP, TTP and EVFTA because in the this in these two agreements. So governments even have more possibilities to influence investment in order to protect environmental and human rights interests. Yeah. Okay, thank you Professor Tran for for answering this question. I hand over now to Professor Tsu Mei. It's your time. I will answer the standards question. For standards, take technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures that's in chapter six of our set. And actually our set aims are not only to improve implementation of the WTO agreement on TVT, but also to promote mutual understanding between the member states about each other's standards, technical regulations and the policy assessment procedures and to improve information exchange and cooperation in this field. So, as we all know, in this chapter, there is a particular part about transparency, and also the provisions are expected to minimize the adverse effects of regulations on trade by making information on exporting requirements easily available, reducing transaction costs for businesses. And institutionalizing mechanisms for our set of members to resolve specific trade issues with the goal of reducing or eliminating unnecessary TVT. So as the question answered, so I think the role of the standards are being mentioned quite clearly in this chapter. And if we look at the article 6.6 tells in great detail, and then article 6.4 specifies clearly the incorporation of the TVT agreement of the WTO. And also the article 6.8 mentions about the mutual about the mechanisms. Because time is limited, I won't go to details but for the mutual recognition article 6.9 mentions about cooperation and also the existing mutual recognition mechanisms. And for the last question, are there any arrangements for the future review or anything? Yes, if we look at the chapter 6.14, dispute settlement actually, the chapter 19 dispute settlement shall not apply to any matter rising under this chapter, the entrance into force, but the non-application will be subject to a review by the parties two years after the date of entry into force of RCEP. So this answers the last question. And I just want to add something, standards, technical regulation, and also conformity assessments are very important. And if we compare the RCEP, the particular chapter, chapter 6, always with that up your review. So you'll find actually standardization is one of the key elements which has witnessed the deepening process and approached its development and facilitate its progress of the European economic integration. As the European integration developed from customs union after short period for stagnation and then to single market and then to the economic and monetary union afterwards, as we can see the technical harmonization at the European community level also actually moved from non-harmonization to the different approaches before it reached the current state. So if we compare RCEP with you, you will find European standardization has always been in the same state as that of European integration. So if we want to study the interplay of the standardization with the economic integration, EU is a very good example, but of course for RCEP comparatively speaking is less is mentioned here, but as already mentioned in the article 6.14. After two years of entering the force of the RCEP, the details will be discussed. I think as time is limited, I'll just stop here. Thank you. Thank you so much Professor Shumei. So, yes. Let's see. The EU may be a good example in the positive and in a negative way because obviously there's also a lot of discrepancies and problems within the economic region. The next seminar on the, that will be the 7th of 8th of July will focus more on the geopolitical side. So we will also look more into the questions that has been raised. How does it relate to EU? Also maybe EU-Vietnam free trade agreement. Also the questions about conflicts of capital and world powers in all these trade worldwide trade regime. So I leave it to that for now. I would like to thank again very much our three great speakers who gave us a lot of insight into this agreement and also gave us some hope. For example that ISDS is still not set in the agreement and there's still space to keep it out. I heard somewhere that there has been a letter of intent of a group of five RCP members who don't want ISDS insight. So we will see where that goes. Thank you again. Three speakers, Kate Leppen, Professor Tran and Professor Shumei for your wonderful presentations. And also thanks to the interpreters for the interpretation which I didn't hear but which must have been hard to have a German speaking with an English accent to be translated into German. And also to all the other colleagues from Rosa Luxemburg Foundation who helped out with this. I don't know if Nadja Dorschner would like to say something at the end. We didn't speak about that. But if that's not the case, she says no in the chat. See you all hopefully on 8th of July, same time, same channel. Have a nice day or evening depending on where you are.