According to the Nova agency, China signed 16 free trade agreements with 24 other countries and regions in 2017, according to information released this week at the national conference on business. During the year, the country approved the construction of new free trade zones (Ftz) and launched the related feasibility studies.
Zhang Shaogang, director general of the department for international trade and economic affairs of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, said that the authorities are already 'discussing the creation of another 10 Free trade zones for 2018, while another ten are the subject of feasibility studies. Beijing, the official explained, is preparing a new round of talks on the Asia-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (APTA) for the adoption of common trade standards as part of the new Silk Road project.
Zhang also cited the progress of negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (Rcep): the draft regional free trade agreement that should bring together the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and six states with which to date that organization already has commercial agreements of various kinds in place: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. Negotiations for the establishment of the CPP were formally launched in November 2012, on the occasion of the annual ASEAN summit that was held in Cambodia that year. To date, the potential members of the agreement represent a total population of 3,4 billion people and a gross domestic product (GDP) of 49,5 trillion dollars, equal to almost 40 percent of world GDP: a share which for more than half is made up of the combined GDP of India and China.
The "new Silk Road" is the ambitious project through which Beijing aims to create solid industrial relations with the countries that will be involved. Launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the One Belt One Road (Obor) initiative aims to create a network of transport, communication and exchange infrastructures currently involving 64 countries in addition to China - about 4,5 billion people -, over an area that extends between Asia, Europe and Africa.
Beijing's goal is to complete the main route by 2049; supporting the project are currently three lending institutions, headed by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (Aiib), a multilateral bank to which nearly 100 countries have joined so far. The projects admitted to funding under the Obor project open up enormous business opportunities in the transport, telecommunications and energy sectors, as well as in transversal sectors.