Education is the other big item, Australian universities attract a lot of foreign students and that sector is a big money earner. On the radio this morning there was talk about standardizing qualifications making more Australian degrees recognized in member countries.
It comes along at a pretty interesting time there are a lot of tension between China and Australia at the moment. There's handwringing locally over China being granted 99 year ownership leases on some of our ports. Chinese telecom firm Huawei was blocked from our 5G network for "National security" etc.
China has been threatening to block (and in some cases have blocked) shipments of Australian products there have been tariffs on Australian Barley implemented etc, ostensibly in retaliation to some foreign affair stuff. Australia called for an international enquiry into origins of Covid which really annoyed China.
This is so fascinating! I knew Australia hosts a lot of Chinese students but they're really on their way to making education an export of theirs. Thanks for the perspective. I'm beginning to see the huge potentials of this treaty for the parties involved.
Most likely the fact that the US becoming more isolationist forces traditional allies to enter into agreements that they wouldn't have considered previously. In this instance, this is the first trade agreement that has had China, Japan, and South Korea as signatories. Also, despite their posturing China is a HUGE economic power and everyone in the region would prefer to ride that wave instead of be crushed by it.
> Do they not fear alienating the US?
To a certain extent the US has alienated the rest of the world with it's "America first" Trump policy. This is just the logical progression of countries moving on to fill the economic power gap the US has left in the Pacific.
> I suppose once we scuttled the TPP they had no alternatives?
Lol. Everyone else went onto sign the CPTTP which went into effect 30 Dec 2018 which was largely identical to the original TTP, excluding the inclusion of the US of course.
Money apparently. China will lift its tariff against 90% of imports from Japan, increasing from 8% currently. Also Japan and Korea would have similar tariff treatment between each other. South Korea and China already had their own FTA, so it won't matter that much, but has no negative impact either.
The Western narrative of China is a bubble of alternate reality. This RCEP event shows you just how alternate it is.
Sovereign nations don't have foreign occupation forces. Japan and SK are occupied client/vassal/satellite states. We can call them allies if we want to save face, but if china or russia had occupation forces there, we'd call them vassals or satellites or client. Ultimately that's what they are.
We'd never call warsaw-pact nations sovereign states, wonder why we call japan or sk sovereign states?
There are no sovereign indigenous nations in australia. You will not find them as members in the UN, you will not find them on maps, they cannot form any sovereign treaties with other nations, etc.
The idea of "sovereign indigenous nations" is just virtue signaling. Maybe one day they will be free and sovereign nations, but I seriously doubt it.