¡°Will China join the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership)?¡± a director of a TV news show asked me on a midnight phone call last week. ¡°Are you kidding?¡± I sleepily murmured. ¡°No,¡± he said, ¡°President Xi Jinping just announced it this afternoon!¡± OK, that was a call I had to take.
According to the director, Xi told a virtual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting hosted by Malaysia that China would ¡°actively consider¡± joining the CPTPP (or TPP-11), an economic partnership agreement among Japan and 10 other regional economies. The United States withdrew from the original Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) in 2017.
He then told me that President Xi also urged countries to ¡°defend multilateralism¡± and called for the establishment of an ¡°Asia-Pacific free trade zone at an early date.¡± I growled, ¡°When has China become a champion of multilateral free trade?¡± and told him ¡°It¡¯s typical Chinese propaganda.¡±
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