What RCEP is and how it works

One original, in English

The closing words of the agreement record a single original in the English language, signed on the fifteenth day of November in the year two thousand and twenty at Bandar Seri Begawan, Phnom Penh, Bogor, Vientiane, Kuala Lumpur, Nay Pyi Taw, Manila, Singapore, Bangkok, Ha Noi, Canberra, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul and Auckland. The summit that adopted it ran by video link, hosted from Ha Noi, which held the ASEAN chair that year. Most of those cities are the capitals the member records carry. Bogor is not Jakarta, and Auckland is not Wellington.

English is the only authentic text, and it is official in a minority of the parties. The records name a form of English for Australia, Brunei, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore, and name something else in every other member.

The roster is ASEAN plus its own trade partners

Each party from outside ASEAN came to the table through a free trade agreement it already held with ASEAN as a bloc: Australia and New Zealand under one instrument, China, Japan and South Korea under three more. Negotiations launched at the ASEAN summit held in Cambodia in November 2012, with the object of folding those separate agreements into a single one, and the governments in the room were the ASEAN member states of the day and their six partners.

That is the answer to why these and not others, and it left a mismatch that opened later. Timor-Leste was admitted to ASEAN on 26 October 2025 and is not a party here, so the two rosters no longer coincide.

The agreement also did something none of its parents had done. No trade treaty bound China, Japan and South Korea to one another before it.

India, and the wait everyone else serves

India negotiated from the start and withdrew in November 2019. Ministers adopted a declaration on 11 November 2020, days before signature, recording that the agreement is open for accession by India from the date of entry into force, and that until then India may attend meetings as an observer and take part in economic cooperation activities.

Article 20.9 sets a different rule for everyone else: accession is open to any State or separate customs territory eighteen months after the agreement enters into force. India is the only country the parties named in advance, and the only one excused that wait.

What a member actually schedules

Under Article 2.4 each party cuts or removes its customs duties in line with its own schedule in Annex I, and the schedules are not uniform. Most parties lodged one schedule applying to every other party. China, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and Viet Nam lodged schedules divided into sections that apply to different parties: China's runs to five sections, for the ASEAN member states, Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, while the Philippine schedule holds one section of common concessions and four narrower ones. Because the same good can meet a different rate depending on which party it came from, Article 2.6 makes an importer establish an RCEP country of origin rather than simply show that the good originated somewhere inside the area.

Set against that, one set of origin rules covers the whole area. Material from any party counts towards the origin of a finished good made in another, which puts a single regime where the ASEAN agreements had run five.

Entry into force came in stages

Article 20.6 set the threshold at sixty days after at least six ASEAN signatories and three others had deposited their instruments with the depositary, the Secretary-General of ASEAN. The quorum was met in November 2021, and the agreement entered into force on 1 January 2022 for Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. South Korea followed on 1 February 2022, Malaysia on 18 March 2022, Indonesia on 2 January 2023 and the Philippines on 2 June 2023.

Myanmar is where the published lists part company. The Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore records the agreement in force for Myanmar from 4 March 2022. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia sets out the dates for the other signatories and does not name Myanmar among them. The catalogue holds both statements and settles neither.

What the text does not ask, and what it does not carry

Nothing in the agreement bears on how a party is governed. The member records name an absolute monarchy, an elective monarchy, constitutional and parliamentary monarchies, a one-party state, two people's republics, and presidential and parliamentary republics.

Nor does the text carry a chapter on labour or one on the environment. Government procurement appears as a transparency chapter without market access commitments, and the investment chapter provides no investor-state dispute settlement, leaving that question to discussion after entry into force. Seven of the members are also party to the CPTPP, whose text is drawn differently on each of those points.

Where accession stands

The window under Article 20.9 opened eighteen months after 1 January 2022. Hong Kong lodged a formal accession request immediately after the agreement came into force, ahead of that window, and the Hong Kong government reports that the RCEP Joint Committee adopted accession procedures in September 2024. The standing work sits with the RCEP Support Unit, which occupies a floor of the ASEAN Secretariat building on Jalan Sisingamangaraja in Jakarta.