The TPP will also serve as an important part of the Obama administration's "Pivot to Asia" strategy, attempting to shift the direction of the booming East Asian economic integration by luring regional economies into the U.S.-led Asia-Pacific regional institutional construction. By excluding China from the TPP, the United States intends to dilute China's increasing influence in the region.

Washington attaches great importance to the Asia-Pacific region and places high hopes on the TPP, hence its moves to prevent the rise of any regional economic group that excludes the United States. Ultimately, Washington wishes to reshape the global trade pattern based on its own will. While pushing hard for TPP negotiations, the United States has also sped up negotiations with the EU on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, seeking a U.S.-EU free trade zone. The United States also leads the global Trade in Service Agreement negotiations. If the United States fulfills its plans, the layout of global trade will undergo a major transformation.

The TPP has marked a change from the traditional negotiation mode of mutually exchanging market access, attempting to set new rules for regional economic integration—a feature that regional economies recognize for its potential long-term significance. However, most Asia-Pacific economies are unwilling to put all their eggs into one basket. On the one hand, they welcome TPP negotiations; and on the other hand, they also actively participate in bilateral trade negotiations and multilateral talks within frameworks such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the East Asia Summit, ASEAN+1 and ASEAN+3. These negotiations vary in terms of their respective standards and scope, representing a diverse array of free trade experiments in the region.

Regional solutions

In 2006, Japan proposed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East Asia on the basis of East Asian cooperation, attempting to compete with China's proposal of an East Asia Free Trade Area on the basis of the ASEAN+3 group (ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea). Both initiatives are aimed at establishing an East Asian community. When TPP negotiations gained momentum, some East Asian economies including Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Viet Nam and the Philippines joined the talks; but in the meantime, to maintain its lead role in East Asian cooperation, ASEAN as a whole began to promote negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

With the ASEAN Free Trade Area (FTA) at the core, the RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 ASEAN members and six economies with which ASEAN has existing FTAs including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand. The RCEP will feature broader and deeper engagement with significant improvements of the existing five ASEAN+1 FTAs, while recognizing the individual and diverse conditions of participating economies. It aims to create a high-quality, modern FTA that will add new elements including trade in services, intellectual property protection and competition policies on the basis of existing FTAs. While member economies hold talks on the RCEP, bilateral free trade negotiations are underway between ASEAN and its partners, as well as talks on a China-South Korea free trade agreement and a China-Japan-South Korea FTA.

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