In view of the profound and complex changes in the development environment both within and outside the region, only through rule upgrading, institutional improvement, deeper opening-up and governance strengthening to build the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership into a free trade arrangement that is implementable, monitorable, binding and governable, can it maintain its momentum and turn challenges into opportunities.

The world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation, and the role of the RCEP as a stabilizer for free trade has strengthened. Guided by openness, inclusiveness, mutual benefit and win-win results, the RCEP provides important certainty and stability for the Asia-Pacific economy, and even the global economy.

As risks of global supply chain disruptions rise, the RCEP's function in coordinating and integrating industry chains has increased. For instance, in the energy sector, all RCEP members, with the exception of Australia and New Zealand, generally rely heavily on energy supplies from the Middle East. The RCEP needs to optimize institutional arrangements such as tariff concessions, cumulative rules of origin and customs clearance facilitation through intra-regional economic and trade cooperation, in order to accelerate the formation of a more closely integrated regional economic cooperation system and enhance the resilience of industrial and supply chains including energy.

Against the backdrop of tightening global market access, RCEP economies are well-positioned to advance greater opening-up in customs procedures, inspection and quarantine, cross-border investment and business personnel mobility. This will help attract international capital that has been severely impacted by geopolitical risks, especially capital from the Middle East. It is expected that the scale of foreign investment attracted by RCEP economies will expand further in the coming years. With the full and deepening implementation of the RCEP, the dividends from its core rules, including tariff concessions, cumulative rules of origin, and trade facilitation, are being delivered in a concentrated manner, making the RCEP a core engine for regional trade and investment growth. The latest data from the China's General Administration of Customs show that trade volume between China and other RCEP members rose from $1.48 trillion in 2020 to $1.94 trillion in 2025. As long as free trade under RCEP remains stable, global free trade stands a chance to stay stable.

Data from the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade for 2025 shows that the number of RCEP certificates of origin issued by the CCPIT system increased by 23.93 percent year-on-year, with the total value of such certificates rising by 19.37 percent year-on-year.

Regional industry and supply chain integration has also been strengthened with the implementation of the RCEP. For example, the data in the 2025 RCEP Development Report released by the China Institute for Reform and Development shows that in 2024, intra-RCEP trade in intermediate goods accounted for more than 68.3 percent, with deeper integration in industry chains such as electronics, automobiles and new energy.

China's manufacturing capacity, the technologies of Japan and the Republic of Korea, the low-cost production of Southeast Asian nations, and the resource endowments of Australia and New Zealand have formed a clear pattern of regional economic and trade complementarity. Cooperation on industrial parks within the region, such as the "Two Countries, Twin Parks" (the Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park in Pahang state and the China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region) model between China and Malaysia, has accelerated, promoting capacity coordination and technology sharing among members and reducing the risk of disruptions to industry and supply chains. In the face of the bullying measures of the United States such as so-called reciprocal tariffs and transshipment clauses, the RCEP has yet to formulate a joint response strategy. Even within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, coordinated joint action has not been achieved, which has, to a certain extent, negatively impacted regional economic integration. Faced with new changes and challenges in the geopolitical landscape, the RCEP members need to strengthen consensus on major issues and strive for joint action. For example, they should establish an emergency coordination mechanism to conduct consultations and communication on major external shocks and formulate joint responses.

Against this backdrop, the RCEP members should further expand tariff concessions. Members with capability should take the lead in increasing the scope and accelerating the pace of tariff reduction. The RCEP members should also significantly expand the openness of their services trade markets, Among the RCEP members that currently adopt a positive list for services trade, five are committed to switching to a negative list regime within six years after the agreement's entry into force in 2022. Time is pressing and progress needs to be accelerated.

In terms of higher-standard rules, the RCEP has formed a relatively unified regional rules framework in areas such as trade in goods, rules of origin, customs procedures and trade facilitation. Going forward, the key is to upgrade the RCEP to higher-standard rules, reduce the costs of crossborder layout and intermediate goods flows, and turn the RCEP's institutional advantages into tools for enterprises to strengthen the resilience and risk resistance of their regional industrial and supply chains. This includes advancing the upgrade of rules of origin from partial accumulation to full accumulation as soon as possible.

In terms of the RCEP governance mechanism, efforts should be accelerated to establish an independent and efficient RCEP Secretariat and formulate an action plan for collective responses to regional risks. Meanwhile, the outline for China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) clearly calls for expanding the RCEP and its review process. Thus, it is imperative to accelerate the breakthrough in RCEP expansion. In particular, the accession of Hong Kong, China has an important role to play in unlocking the potential of the RCEP and raising its level of openness.

The more turbulent the geopolitical landscape, the more prominent the RCEP's strategic role becomes, and the more it should help strengthen certainty within the region. The more severe the external risks and challenges are, the greater the urgency for RCEP to deepen economic and trade cooperation, and the more necessary it is to enhance the predictability of regional coordination. The more fragmented the external environment becomes, the more urgent it is to jointly advance the upgrading of RCEP. In this way, it can inject greater certainty into the development of the world economy.

The author is the president of the China Institute for Reform and Development and the president of Hainan Institute for Free Trade Port Studies. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.