As the largest regional free trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific region, most of the signatories to the RCEP have completed the domestic ratification process, and the possibility of RCEP coming into force in the first half of next year is becoming increasingly large, when the Asia-Pacific region will give birth to the world's largest free trade area. However, before it finally lands, RCEP is afraid that it will still face interference and destruction from the United States.
RCEP has a total of 15 states parties, as early as last year, countries have completed the signing, and then handed over to countries to complete their own domestic ratification procedures, the current signed regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement, 11 countries have completed the ratification process or have entered the final stages, RCEP in the first half of 2022 is more and more likely to enter into force.
As we said in the previous program, once this RCEP comes into effect, it will cover the 10 ASEAN countries and 15 countries in China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and will have a huge market of nearly one-third of the world's 2.2 billion people, a GDP of 26.2 trillion US dollars, which also accounts for nearly one-third of the world, and these members will create nearly 28% of the world's trade scale.
According to the ultimate goal of the RCEP, tariffs will be removed for 91% of goods, culminating in an open and inclusive rules-based trade and investment arrangement in the Asia-Pacific region. The official entry into force of the RCEP marks a free trade zone with the largest population in the world, the most diverse membership structure, and the greatest development potential. The RCEP agreement was signed in November 2020, when the epidemic was raging in various countries and the world was experiencing serious anti-globalization, and the United States under the leadership of then President Trump pursued a unilateral policy of Us supremacy around the world, which seriously undermined the globalization process and hurt the rules-based global trading system. In this context, the establishment of RCEP, which includes both Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and the vast number of developing countries such as China and ASEAN, marks that emerging market countries are playing a role in leading the process of globalization, and also marks the general trend of political confrontation and the creation of a new Cold War that cannot change the economic integration of East Asia. You know, the Trump administration at that time was very angry about the conclusion of the RCEP agreement and used various political and diplomatic means to interfere with the destruction. However, neither the allies of the United States nor the vast number of developing countries were moved, resisting pressure and insisting on completing the signing of this agreement.
Signing the agreement is only the first step, and after the signing of the agreement, countries are also required to carry out the domestic ratification process, and many observers at the time believed that because it was signed at the end of last year, the Biden administration will come to power this year, when the change in US policy may make Japan, Australia and other countries change their minds. After all, the previous TPP agreement promoted by the United States and Japan was aimed at China, which was to some extent tailored to contain and isolate China, but it was only due to Trump's insistence on withdrawing. Many of the signatories to the RCEP are members of the TPP, and now that Biden has taken office, many fear that japan and Australia may be allowed to abandon or shelve the RCEP and re-embrace the United States. However, to everyone's surprise, Japan chose to continue to complete the domestic ratification process after Biden took office, and has now completely completed all the procedures for joining the RCEP, waiting for the agreement to enter into force.
According to the terms of the agreement, as long as six of the ten ASEAN countries and three of the other five countries, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, deposit the RCEP Agreement with the ASEAN Secretary-General, the RCEP Agreement can enter into force after 60 days. There are now 11 countries whose domestic deliberations are in the final stages, of which 6 have made it clear that they have completed the deposit process and the other 5 are also speeding up the process. In September, the three countries of China, Japan and south Korea and the ten ASEAN countries reached a consensus on speeding up the domestic ratification process and striving to make the agreement effective in early January next year. Among the 10 ASEAN countries, Singapore, Brunei, Laos and Cambodia have completed the deposit process of the agreement. Thailand and the Philippines have completed congressional and presidential approvals and have entered the final coordination phase before deposit. In Myanmar, where the political situation has suddenly changed, the military also submitted a letter of approval to the ASEAN Secretary-General in May, which means that seven out of ten ASEAN countries have basically completed the entire process of entering into force of the agreement. Among the five countries outside ASEAN, China and Japan have completed the deposit of their instruments of ratification, which means that they have completed all the work of entering into force of the agreement.
New Zealand and Australia also passed the required bill in Parliament in October. The Government of the Republic of Korea has also submitted a letter of approval to the National Assembly. It seems that it is uncertain whether it will officially enter into force in late January next year, but now public opinion generally believes that the possibility of making the agreement come into force in the first half of next year is very large.
However, as RCEP gradually becomes a reality, there are certain variables in whether it can finally land. Once the RCEP really lands, it will open a huge free trade area that includes China and many developed and developing countries, and we talked about how huge its scale is, and its influence on the global scale is self-evident. Once this process begins, China's economy will be fully integrated into the global economic system, making it more difficult to isolate and contain, all of which the United States definitely does not want to see.
As we said, the purpose of the TPP carried out by the Obama administration and The Asia-Pacific countries in that year was to use rules to kick China out of the global trading system, gradually replace the World Trade Organization with the TPP, isolate China from the global trading system, let China's strong production capacity be excluded from the international market, and let China's manufacturing industry be excluded from the global industrial chain and supply chain. Fortunately, Trump took office, he believes that the United States has given too many benefits to TPP members, so that the United States has suffered losses, so it withdrew from the TPP at the moment of a foot, thus making the TPP fall short.
As we said in previous episodes, although after the withdrawal of the United States, under the leadership of Japan, other former TPP members established a CPTPP, but this organization is more of a free trade organization, losing the United States will lose its political color, so it is ironic that now China has officially submitted an application to join the CPTPP, which shows that China is true love for a free and open international trading system, as long as it is conducive to common prosperity and economic development, we will not refuse. Of course, this situation makes the current Biden administration very annoyed, as Obama's deputy, the Biden administration is from the bone to support the Obama era with trade rules to contain China's economy, but now the United States has been kidnapped by the populism represented by Trump, it is difficult to directly return to the TPP, and there is no attractive economic solution to induce its allies to abandon RCEP.
However, it is worth vigilance that from the perspective of Biden's foreign policy in the past six months in the past six months, Biden is fully mobilizing multilateral cooperation to contain China, and in its so-called fierce competition with China, joint allies working together to deal with China is the core of the policy. Therefore, in the critical period when the RCEP is on the verge of being at the door, the United States is likely to undermine it, and Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore and other countries that have not yet completed the effective procedures may become a breakthrough for the United States to exert damage. The United States is well aware that it does not have much economic chips in its hands, so when weaving multilateral gangs against China, it is more under the pretext of political security and security, by demonizing the powerful China, to intimidate China's neighboring countries, hoping to use factors other than the economy to dominate the economic and trade relations between countries and China.
Recently, the United States has been deliberately creating an atmosphere of tension around the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait issue and even by fabricating rumors and fabricating facts, with the aim of poisoning China's surrounding environment and undermining the good atmosphere of cooperation between China and Asia-Pacific countries. At this stage before the RCEP really landed, it is difficult to say what kind of conspiracy the United States will engage in to undermine the formation of a new situation of free trade in the Asia-Pacific region. However, there is not much time left for the Americans to do damage, and I believe that these countries have recognized the true intentions of the Americans in the half a year after Biden took office, the vast majority of countries insist on advancing the ratification process, and Japan, as the number one ally of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region, is the first to complete the ratification, which is more convincing. Even Japan did not run after the United States, and the other little brothers had to weigh it even more. Everyone should clearly consider whether we want an Asia-Pacific free trade area with common prosperity and common development, or a US encirclement network against China that has returned to the Cold War and is full of confrontations.