n November 2012, ASEAN and its FTA partners formally agreed to launch RCEP negotiations. At the same time, ASEAN and its FTA partners decided upon the Guiding Principles and Objectives for Negotiating the RCEP. It is important to note that economies without an FTA with ASEAN (such as the United States) cannot participate in RCEP negotiations.19 In other words, having signed an FTA with ASEAN is the precondition for participation in RCEP negotiations. Thus, participation in RCEP negotiations is not open. The Guiding Principle and Objectives state:
Any ASEAN FTA Partner that did not participate in the RCEP negotiations at the outset would be allowed to join the negotiations, subject to terms and conditions that would be agreed with all other participating countries (Principle 6).
The progress made in 2011 regarding the trilateral PRC–Japan–Republic of Korea FTA, known as the CJK FTA, also deserves attention. At the trilateral summit in October 2009, the three economies agreed to launch a study on the CJK FTA with an original completion date before the end of 2012. However, at the trilateral summit in May 2011, the leaders of the three economies agreed to speed up the study so that it could be finished before the end of 2011. (The final study group was held in December 2011.) Then, at the trilateral summit meeting in Bali on 19 November 2011, which was held before the completion of the accelerated study, the three leaders agreed to start CJK FTA negotiations as soon as possible.20