Closer China-South Korea trade and commerce – as well as taking advantage of the powerful new regional RCEP trade accord and the China-South Korea Free Trade Agreement – were calls made at a conference held in Changchun, capital city of Northeast China's Jilin province, on June 22. 

RCEP – or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement – is a huge Asia-Pacific trading club introduced earlier this year which is seeing tariffs and taxes between partner countries decrease substantially. It is the world's largest free trade area and China and South Korea are signatory members. 

The event, hosted by the Jilin Provincial Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the Jilin Provincial Department of Commerce and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, was also conducted on livestreaming and attracted 14,900 online viewers.

During the conference, experts in related fields explained the comparisons between RCEP and the China-Korea FTA, the rules of origin, tariff concessions, standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures.

The successive implementation of RCEP in various countries was widely viewed at the conference as providing new opportunities for deepening bilateral cooperation between China and South Korea – in terms of the expanding economic and trade scale – and injecting new momentum into the economic recovery of the Asia-Pacific region and even the world.

It is expected that RCEP members will implement tax reductions in line with the provisions of the agreement and that more than 90 percent of the goods trading in the regions will eventually enjoy zero tariffs.

As a free trade agreement with the largest combined population, largest economic and trade scale and the most development potential in the world, the RCEP accord is said to have brought major new opportunities – to, for example, the agricultural products of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, so the region can further open up to international markets.

Within RCEP member countries, Jilin's close geographic proximity is said to give it natural advantages for improved long-term trade and commerce with South Korea.

According to its customs statistics, in 2021, the value of the province's imports and exports totaled 24.37 billion yuan ($3.64 billion) with RCEP member countries, with imports and exports to South Korea coming in at 5.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.1 percent.

That year, South Korea became the second largest export market and the 13th largest import market for Jilin province.

Moving forwards, plans are for Jilin to expand the scale of its trade with South Korea, strengthen cooperation in key industries and highlight the promotion of trade and investment platforms – so as to steadily promote the province's open economy to achieve high-quality development.