The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement was signed in 2020 and effective as of 2022. Signatories are made up of countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
This included larger states such as Japan, Australia and Indonesia but also developing countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Perhaps most interestingly, China is also a signatory to this agreement, the most major involvement of China in digital trade agreements.
Content of agreement
RCEP includes a chapter on electronic commerce which includes a broad range of articles on paperless trading, e-authentication, consumer protection, personal data protection, spam and domestic regulator standards for e-transactions.
The e-commerce chapter also extends into major and more controversial areas of digital trade discussed on this site. This included articles on: custom duties, data localisation and cross-border transfer of information amongst others. In its coverage it is hence quite broad-reaching
Many of the key clauses ressemble those of the CPTPP chapter (such as rules around data localisation and cross-border data) which included some similar signatory countries.
Broad Exceptions
The major difference of RCEP from the CPTPP is that much of the chapter uses so-called “soft” language. This means that compared to the CPTPP, many of the RCEP rules are non-binding legally where signatories will seek to follow such rules
Beyond this non-binding language, there is an additional layer of strong exceptions in the agreement. These include many exceptions for “legitimate public policy”, “government procurement” and standard “general exceptions”. These exceptions are positioned as favourable to those claiming the exception.
The chapter is also explicitly excluded from dispute resolution. Overall, this means that although the discussion is quite broad, signatories have made relatively weak commitments.