Addressing the COVID-19 Shock: The Potential Job Creation in China by the RCEP

Abstract

In 2020, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) left around 81% of the global workforce, nearly 2.7 billion workers, affected. Employment in China was the first to be hit by COVID-19. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is expected to bring dynamism to China’s employment market in an era of long COVID-19. This study aims to examine the number of sectoral jobs that the RCEP will create in China, with the number of skilled or unskilled labour employed in each sector. The exogenous shocks to the RCEP can be reflected in the number of jobs created through multipliers based on a social accounting matrix compiled from China’s input-output tables in 2017, combined with the employment satellite accounts compiled. The results show that the RCEP is expected to create over 17 million potential jobs in China, with unskilled labour accounting for 10.44 million and skilled labour for 6.77 million. It is even expected that there will be job losses in the metalworking machinery sector. The contribution of this paper can serve as a reference for policies to protect vulnerable sectors, further open up trade markets and strengthen cooperation among RCEP members as important measures to address the employment impact of long COVID-19.

China’s shipping market supervision system under theRCEP: Influence, challenges and countermeasures

“…It is pointed out that the complex global value chains underlying the RCEP raise an important question on the macroeconomic (output, inflation, exchange rate, and interest rate) exposure of ASEAN to output shocks in the non-ASEAN-RCEP members, within the context of expanded regional architecture (Raghavan et al, 2022). However, the RCEP allows the huddling of Asian economies to weaken the influence of EU standards (Wu et al, 2022) In the field of the impact of RCEP on international trade and shipping industry, some scholars inferred that the signing of RCEP has also had a significant impact on the shipping industry. It will significantly promote the increase in container shipping between Chinese coastal ports and Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand, reduce export costs, and further increase the proportion of near-ocean container routes .It is important to build international shipping hubs, use new technologies to promote the development of the shipping industry and related service industries and form a domestic and international dual-circulation industry development structure by the RCEP (Chang, 2022).At present, the recovery of the shipping industry in 2021 and the signing of RCEP make the reconfiguration and optimization of the container shipping network a very important task .…”

“…Besides, the RCEP is regarded as largely offsetting the significant impact of the US-China trade friction on the world at large. These rapidly changing international environments make China face a complicated environment that it has never encountered before, because China occupies an important position in the global industrial chain and supply chain (Wu et al, 2022). In a word, China has always unswervingly supported the multilateral trading system, and exhibited large firmness and patience throughout the RCEP negotiation process.…”

“…The signing of the RCEP is expected to trigger the gradual overcoming of the challenging global economic situation characterized by protectionism and the COVID-19 pandemic (Shimizu, 2021). In a word, These rapidly changing international environments make China face a complicated environment that it has never encountered before, because China occupies an important position in the global industrial chain and supply chain (Wu et al, 2022).…”