The Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a major trade agreement featuring nations across the Indo-Pacific, with outsized representation from Southeast Asia. However, the RCEP has never included Taiwan. Considering Taiwan’s strong efforts to shift trade from China to Southeast Asia under the 2016 New Southbound Policy (NSP), RCEP members have few obvious economic reasons to exclude Taiwan. Rather, it is the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic and political influen...
