The Impact Of Trade Agreement Depth On Regional Value Chain Cooperation

With improved information technology,reduced transport costs and lower trade barriers,the global value chain model featuring a particular production process or production task has gradually replaced the traditional trade model featuring the centralised production of a particular product as the mainstream of the international division of labour.The active integration of Asia-Pacific economies into the international division of labour in value chains has stimulated the development of national economies,but the achievement of strong development has also brought new problems and challenges to trade cooperation.Trade protectionism in developed countries,the trend of "counter-globalisation" and the worldwide spread of the new 2020 pneumoconiosis have all resulted in multiple shocks to the global production system,which,coupled with the limitations of developing countries in terms of capital levels and core technologies,are more likely to have a negative impact on developing countries.At present,with the Doha Round negotiations stalled for a long time and the WTO multilateral process slowing down,the introduction of deeper,more flexible and efficient trade agreements has become an important way to promote further development of trade cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.Therefore,strengthening deeper trade cooperation between the Asia-Pacific region has become an important way to escape the crisis of reverse globalisation and evolve towards the top end of the value chain.The deepening of the global value chain division of labour system has promoted the development of inter-regional free trade agreements.Coupled with the wave of counter-globalisation and the impact of the new crown epidemic,global value chains are gradually shifting from globalisation to regionalisation.The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP),which officially came into effect in January 2022,has been constructed into a comprehensive,modern,high-standard and mutually beneficial mega free trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific region,and a new type of regional value chain has been formed among RCEP countries.This value chain is an extension of the Asia-Pacific regional value chain and an important part of the production network in the Asia-Pacific region,which is of great significance in breaking down trade barriers in the Asia-Pacific region,enhancing This value chain is an extension of the Asia-Pacific regional value chain and an important part of the production network in the Asia-Pacific region,which is of great significance in breaking down trade barriers in the Asia-Pacific region,upgrading the value chain status of Asia-Pacific countries and promoting the in-depth cooperation of the value chain among Asia-Pacific countries.Therefore,starting with the trade agreements concluded among RCEP countries,this paper aims to explore whether the enhancement of the depth of trade agreements is conducive to the promotion of regional value chain cooperation,and thus provide policy guidelines for the construction of a high-quality free trade area network between China and RCEP countries.Based on a review of the literature on the depth of trade agreements and regional value chain cooperation and their interrelationship,this paper presents the research questions,analyses the supporting theories and mechanisms,and analyses the development of the depth of trade agreements and regional value chain cooperation in RCEP countries.Although existing studies have recognised that the increase in the depth of trade agreements has a greater impact on the division of labour in value chains than the number of trade agreements concluded,there are still few studies on the relationship between the depth of trade agreements and value chain cooperation,and fewer studies have combined regional value chain cooperation with the trade agreements concluded between RCEP countries.In view of this,this paper selects trade agreements concluded between RCEP countries as the object of study to empirically examine the actual impact of increasing the depth of trade agreements on regional value chain cooperation.The empirical results show that:the increase in the depth of trade agreements concluded between members is conducive to regional value chain cooperation among member countries;the increase in the depth of core provisions also promotes regional value chain cooperation,but the effect is smaller than the total depth;the promotion effect of WTO-X provisions on regional value chain cooperation is significantly larger than that of WTO+provisions on regional value chain cooperation.The "new" and "deep" trade provisions covered by the "second generation" trade policy can further promote regional value chain cooperation by improving the quality of the system and improving the revenue environment.Compared with tariff-type provisions,deeper non-tariff provisions can facilitate the rapid movement of product chains among member countries by regulating non-tariff barriers,resulting in a significant reduction in trade costs and thus a significant deepening of intra-regional value chain cooperation;for regional value chain cooperation at different sub-niches,deeper trade agreements still have a certain degree of positive impact on them,and as inter-country regional value chain cooperation increases from a distributed level to a more diversified level,it can be further enhanced.For the level of regional value chain cooperation at different sub-niches,increasing the depth of trade agreements still has a positive impact on it to a certain extent,and as regional value chain cooperation among countries changes from the upper end of the distribution to the lower end,the contribution of increasing the depth of trade agreements to the degree of regional value chain cooperation diminishes significantly.The innovation of this paper is that it starts from the depth of trade agreements and conducts research on the depth of trade agreements and regional value chain cooperation,which expands the research perspective of the existing literature and has certain research significance;it selects the member countries of the world’s largest FTA,RCEP,as the research object,which provides reference value for breaking the US hegemony,reducing the impact of reverse globalisation and improving the value position of member countries;it is based on the latest data from WTO.The study is based on the latest data from the WTO,WORLD BANK,UIBE,UN Comtrade and other databases,and the research period is set at 2007 to 2019,which makes the results more convincing.The main shortcoming of this article is that it does not measure and study the specific provisions of the trade agreements separately,and due to the limitation of data volume,it does not analyse the data of Myanmar and New Zealand.