Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a recently established Free Trade Agreement between Asia-Pacific countries with the goal of increasing trade between participating countries. A total of twenty Chapters, seventeen Annexes, and fifty-four schedules of obligations are included in the agreement between its partners, with legal features correlating to the explorations of its interactions with member countries. RCEP established an integrated market with 15 member countries, which has facilitated the mobility of products and services among them. It aims to negotiate on trade in products and services, investment, intellectual property, dispute settlement, e-commerce, small and medium-sized firms, and economic cooperation. Currently, it is the world's largest free trade agreement in terms of economic impact, and it has the potential to promote trade and integration among member countries. The objectives of this chapter are to evaluate the opportunities and challenges RCEP faces. We focus primarily on secondary data gathered from scholarly journals and formal reports. RCEP has the potential to expand economic growth among the participating countries. However, one of the challenges that needs to be considered is that some countries may be in a less advantageous position, as the agreements made might affect their internal economic development. We argue that despite the numerous advantages of the Partnership, all members must be able to address the four major issues identified in this chapter if they were to benefit fully from the RCEP.

Connectivity is the basis of e-commerce development. E-commerce reinforces connectivity and aims to promote a continuous stream of information, logistics, free cash flow, and so forth. A seamless connection between the virtual and physical parts of an e-commerce network could be demonstrated in Cross-Border Ecommerce (CBE). A region-wide e-commerce support environment with a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement would undoubtedly support economic stabilization. Notably, this model is positively in line with the restricted conditions during the COVID-19 outbreak (Anshari et al., 2021a). However, business actors should improve connectivity-derived services via technology and the internet in order to add more value to the successful implementation of CBE. Considering today's consumers are more complex, the COVID-19 economic turbulence has resulted in a severe bankruptcy storm for business areas worldwide (Hamdan et al., 2020). Hence, the study aims to identify the potential and opportunities of CBE, which will be explained in detail in this study. The determinants of the successful adoption of CBE remain complex. Therefore, our framework allows us to assess the extent of concerns about CBE opportunities and the potential for accelerating economic recovery during the pandemic COVID-19. In addition, CBE requires new regulations, and Asian nations must actively take part in rule-setting in order to achieve economic benefits. CBE can also provide new opportunities for local businesses where it can reach beyond their borders. 

In this digital era, the economic sector has been transformed while gearing towards increased digitisation. In part, this has led to innovation, growth, and enhanced competitiveness, further leading to economic development. As a result, ASEAN countries have been pursuing adapting this change towards the digital era to prepare new technological advances that can create opportunities for development, including addressing possible threats. This chapter examines how the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) affects the commercial and economic activities of RCEP member countries, including supply chain management (SCM), tariff reductions on trade, customs duty reductions, market expansion, and the likelihood of obtaining economies of scale in manufacturing. We adopted a qualitative method approach, which involved reviewing current literature and interpreting them in order to make possible recommendations. The findings indicate that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will significantly impact industries in the Asia-Pacific region, such as textile and apparel supply chain integration, and that this will provide a significant opportunity for member countries to improve their economic conditions further. Additionally, improving the SCM leads to an increase in GDP, enabling many countries to achieve a favourable balance of trade and encouraging them to pursue innovation. The implementation of the RCEP agreement also has its challenges and needs to be addressed in order to make the adoption of RCEP a success. 

This chapter examines the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement in general, as well as analyse the recent status of ICT infrastructure of RCEP member countries. It primarily focuses on the RCEP, which was signed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand in order to expand and strengthen engagements with one another and their relationships to Industry 4.0, whereby the potential issues and solutions are discussed in greater depth. It also highlights the security and privacy issues and thoughts on how 4IR might help countries improve their economies over the long term. The chapter includes reflections on experiences as well as an analysis of how the information contained in the agreement affects the growth of the RCEP agreement

The arena of technological advancements continues to grow due to changing market demands, which creates inevitable competition among innovators. Thus, this leads to the emergence of disruptive innovation. This chapter examines the relationship between the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement and the advent of Disruptive Innovation. RCEP was signed in November 2020 by a total of fifteen countries, with the goal of advancing regional economic integration and exerting greater influence over the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The main focus of this chapter is on assessing the benefits of disruptive innovation and trade under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). We performed a literature review and applied SWOT analysis in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of disruptive innovation, as well as the opportunities and challenges presented by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Disruptive innovation can be beneficial to the majority of RCEP countries since it can raise market growth, increase profit, and increase the productivity of – and efficiency for, disruptive technologies used in manufacturing. On the other hand, the possible challenges may be detrimental to smaller emerging economies, whose employment rates may be adversely impacted, and local enterprises may be overshadowed as a result of the increased competition.

Big data does not only revolve around how much storage is needed for data, but rather its capability of assisting in many areas, such as economics, healthcare, educational institutions and others. Big data has a lot of potential to increase international trade. As the most significant free-trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) can utilise big data and related technologies to create fair and mutually beneficial trade. With the main characteristics of volume, variety, and velocity, big data provides strategic advantages for businesses that use it. The data can be processed using descriptive, diagnostics, predictive and prescriptive analytics. However, not all RCEP members have the same level of data processing capability. Therefore, this study examines how RCEP members utilise big data by extracting data from secondary sources. The results showed that each of the RCEP members’ IT development also varies, and so does the use of big data. Therefore, decision-makers need to resolve issues related to data utilisation, especially in terms of digital literacy, security, and privacy. 

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) aims to strengthen the economy and the free trade agreement among 10 ASEAN member states (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and five partner states (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand). One of the ways to improve economic growth is to enhance the investment sector into start-ups and SMEs. Peer-to-peer lending platforms exist to ease the mechanism of funds lending and borrowing from investors to start-ups and SMEs. Currently, the rise of P2P lending, particularly in RCEP member states, has boosted the economic growth and development of technology. The government assistance in setting up the regulation regarding the mechanism of P2P lending has been carried out in order to create a clean and transparent practice of P2P lending among borrowers and lenders. Therefore, this chapter describes the introduction of RCEP member states and P2P lending and the mechanism for adopting P2P lending platforms in RCEP member states. P2P is indeed a platform that RCEP members can practice. However, the risks must be considered and addressed in order to prevent threats to their economic growth. 

An economic partnership can play a significant role in poverty reduction in the countries involved. The partnership’s contribution to poverty alleviation is, however, a function of its scope and the nature of participating countries, which could be constrained by various factors. Considering this, the chapter addresses the question of whether the RCEP can contribute meaningfully to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 1 within the ASEAN region. This aspect is yet to be subjected to scholarly examination. The chapter examines the potential of the RCEP to help ASEAN countries to eradicate poverty, the factors that could jeopardise this endeavour and the measures that could be taken to address these factors. Findings show that the RCEP could indeed contribute to the realisation of Sustainable Development Goal 1 in ASEAN countries since it has the potential to contribute to poverty eradication. This is because of the partnership’s capacity to, among other aspects, drive economic growth, boost real convergence and optimise the poverty eradication potential of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the ASEAN region. This contribution may, however, be jeopardised with the advent of adverse events like the COVID-19 pandemic, and because of political instability in some ASEAN countries. In order to mitigate the impact of both of these challenges, ASEAN countries could reinforce their social protection systems, intensify their commitment to the RCEP and address the needs of the losers in the RCEP.

There is increasing awareness of being socially responsible and the need to address social problems involving various key stakeholders in the public and private sectors, the corporate world and businesses, as well as the community. With social issues experienced globally, such as introducing diversity in society and eradicating poverty, it is imperative to use social innovation to improve or replace the way things are currently done. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of social innovation on entrepreneurship as a way of providing stable income to underprivileged and unemployed segments and youth. It discusses key elements that support the development of entrepreneurship to ensure sustainability and growth, to ensure the underprivileged segment and youth will continue to earn income, thus reducing reliance on welfare assistance support. The research was conducted based on interviews and observation methods. Two significant projects were investigated that employed the social innovation model, how they were applied, and the implications to the society that participated in these projects. These include the processes, the role of individuals and the collective action of key strategic stakeholders in managing and structuring the programmes. We conclude with the importance of entrepreneurship in driving economic growth and empowering the targeted segment, such as the underprivileged, through entrepreneurship to provide employment and sustainable income. Recommendations include: managing social issues, uncover the importance of social inclusivity, introducing social innovation to develop individuals and drive economic growth, involvement of all parties from the public and private sectors, as well as nonprofit and non-government organisations to expand the initiatives to include those who are entitled to receive the support.