The Incremental Development of the ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership for Intellectual Property

Abstract

In November 2000, a few years after the Asian Financial Crisis, Premier Zhu Rongji announced China’s interest in developing a free trade area with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) within a decade. Since then, the two trading powers established a framework agreement as well as agreements on dispute settlement, trade in goods, trade in services and investment. They also developed memoranda of understanding on cooperation in a wide variety of areas, including agriculture, disaster management, health, information and communications technology, intellectual property, non-traditional security issues, sanitation and phytosanitation, standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment, and transportation. Taken together, these instruments helped build and strengthen the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), which has served important economic, geopolitical and strategic goals.

This chapter documents the incremental efforts ASEAN and China have undertaken to develop a strategic partnership for intellectual property. It begins by recounting the historical development of the ACFTA. It further examines the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Field of Intellectual Property, which ASEAN and China signed in October 2009. The chapter then discusses the ongoing intellectual property norm-setting activities in Asia, focusing in particular on the development of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Belt and Road Initiative. The chapter concludes by closely exploring the ramifications, benefits and challenges of maintaining an effective ASEAN-China strategic partnership for intellectual property.