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Author : S. Trush
Leading research fellow, Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP (TPP)
initiative was first launched by New Zealand, Sin-
gapore and Chile in 2003. Since the United States
joined the process in 2011, this concept, signifi-
cantly reformatted and with an expanded mem-
bership, has been regarded as a purely American
one. It is also rightly seen as a (if not the) key el-
ement of the strategic shift of focus in U.S. for-
eign policy to the Asia-Pacific Region. It is also
often viewed in conjunction with the conceptually symmetrical Transatlantic Partnership
between the United States and the European Union. Many experts argue - with varying
degrees of credibility - that the combination of these two initiatives is of central, systemic
importance to the foreign-policy and foreign economic strategy of the Administration of
Barack Obama.
The TPP is designed to unify the countries of three regional areas: the Asia-Pacific Region
(APR), North America and South America. The partnership will include economic actors
differing significantly in the size of their economy, level of industrialization, methods of
governance, and involvement in global trade.
As intended by the initiators, along with a phase-out (by 2025) of all tariff barriers to trade,
the member countries should accept the obligations, regulations and principles of eco-
nomic activity known among experts as the "platinum standard." This standard applies
not only to trade, but also to production, taxation, rules of competition in public and pri-
vate business, transparency of investment, intellectual property rights, and labor law.
Even in the view of some American analysts, the terms and criteria for the accession of
Pacific countries to the TPP community are excessively "Americentric." They carry the
project well beyond the limits of a trade bloc and are dictated by the narrow corporate in-
terests of U.S. industrial groups.
In the analyst's view, the current TPP members have in large part become hostage to the
U.S.-China confrontation. They will largely have to accept the American conditions as a
preventive measure directed against China's economic and military activity in the region.4
THERE ARE TWO POINTS OF VIEW in China leading to different scenarios for a
Chinese response to the TPP.
The first, dominant point of view is a negative one: for the time being, it rules out the
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The American Trans-Pacific Partnership Project and China