The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has gone through four years since its official entry into force on January 1, 2022. It has made important contributions to promoting regional integration, promoting regional economic growth, and boosting global economic confidence, becoming a good model for promoting multilateral cooperation mechanisms. At present, the world's century long changes are accelerating, unilateralism and protectionism are on the rise, hegemonism and power politics threats are on the rise, the international economic and trade order is facing severe challenges, the competition among major powers is intensifying, the geopolitical landscape is becoming more complex, and the growth momentum of the world economy is insufficient. RCEP has further relaxed market access for goods, services, investment, and other goods within the region, optimized the business environment within the region, and made factor flows more free and convenient. By opening up on a larger scale, at a deeper level, and at a higher level, RCEP complements existing bilateral free trade agreements in the region, significantly promoting trade, investment, and industrial chain integration among member countries. Against the backdrop of ongoing uncertainty in the global economy, RCEP continues to release institutional dividends, with trade and investment among member countries steadily advancing, industrial and supply chain cooperation becoming closer, and the resilience of trade, investment, and economic development within the region continuously strengthening. The resilience of trade and investment continues to strengthen. The RCEP cumulative rules of origin, trade facilitation measures, and other policies are conducive to promoting the development of intra regional trade. In 2024, the regional trade volume of goods reached 5.83 trillion US dollars, an increase of 18.7% compared to 2021, and the proportion of global goods trade increased from 27.2% to 29.1%, exceeding the market transaction scale within the European Union. The proportion of goods trade between China and other RCEP member countries in China's total import and export volume remains above 30%. From January to November 2025, it will reach 12.54 trillion yuan, of which the total trade value with ASEAN will reach 6.82 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.5%. Since 2021, it has continued to show a rapid growth trend. China is currently the largest trading partner of Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, Australia, and New Zealand, fully reflecting the role of RCEP in offsetting the adverse effects of rising trade protectionism, unilateralism, and intensified geopolitical games. The trade creation effect of RCEP significantly enhances the resilience of regional trade. The overall level of RCEP customs clearance and trade facilitation has surpassed the WTO's Trade Facilitation Agreement, promoting the improvement of the benefits of regional trade liberalization. RCEP simplifies customs clearance procedures and adopts management measures such as pre determination, pre arrival processing, and information technology application to improve clearance efficiency. It enables the release of goods such as express delivery and perishable goods within 6 hours of arrival, promoting rapid clearance and trade growth of fresh products. The RCEP e-commerce rules empower new forms of cross-border e-commerce to improve quality and efficiency. Its dedicated e-commerce chapter covers important issues such as electronic authentication, online consumer protection, non invited commercial electronic information, and network security, reducing non-tariff barriers to digital trade, creating a trust and favorable environment for cross-border e-commerce, and laying the institutional foundation for member countries' digital trade cooperation. The attractiveness of the RCEP region to global investors continues to rise. RCEP member countries have reformed administrative processes, improved the business environment, and effectively implemented investment facilitation clauses to fulfill their commitments of simplifying approvals and promoting "one-stop" services. This has shortened the project implementation cycle and systematically reduced the institutional costs of enterprise investment and operation. Against the backdrop of a continuous decline in global foreign direct investment, the RCEP region has demonstrated strong resilience in attracting foreign investment. In 2024, the inflow of foreign direct investment within the RCEP region reached 320 billion US dollars. At present, the RCEP region attracts over 30% of foreign direct investment globally, ranking among the top in global regional economic cooperation mechanisms. The resilience of the production and supply chain has been further improved. Since the implementation of the agreement, market access has been further relaxed in areas such as goods, services, and investment, and customs procedures, inspection and quarantine, and technical standards have been further unified, accelerating the free flow of goods, technology, talent, capital, information, and other factors within the region. The industrial and economic structures of each member country are highly complementary, and through continuous optimization of production networks, the division of labor and cooperation among member countries have been deepened, promoting enterprises to comprehensively consider factors such as production costs, technological level, and logistics convenience, and layout research and development, manufacturing, assembly and other links in different member countries. The deep integration of regional industrial chains has formed a more reasonable and beneficial regional value chain, industrial chain, and supply chain closed loop for all parties in the region. RCEP member countries have gradually formed a new division of labor ecology of "regional manufacturing and regional sales", and the resilience of regional production and supply chains has been improved. Taking lithium batteries as an example, as the core industry sector of the global value chain, the division of labor between upstream and downstream industries directly reflects the integration level of regional production networks. China has technological advantages in the research and manufacturing of high-end components such as battery materials, separators, and battery cells, while ASEAN countries have cost and manufacturing advantages in labor-intensive processes such as battery assembly and downstream application integration. The two sides have close cooperation in the production and supply chain. According to data from the General Administration of Customs of China, the export value of lithium battery products from China to ASEAN has increased from 3.505 billion US dollars in 2021 to 5.511 billion US dollars in 2024, with an average annual growth rate of 16.28%. From January to November 2025, the export value reached 6.828 billion US dollars, a new high, reflecting the synergistic effect of regional production networks. High end components flow to ASEAN assembly bases through regional intermediate goods trade, and the final products not only cover the RCEP regional market, but also radiate the global market based on the cost and efficiency advantages of the regional production network. The model effect of multilateral cooperation continues to be released. Although RCEP has not reached the high standards of agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), its country representation is strong, including both developed countries, emerging economies, and underdeveloped countries. The economic development levels of member countries vary greatly, and its economic and trade rules comprehensively consider the special circumstances and development realities of different stages of development, representing a pragmatic, flexible, forward-looking, and inclusive regional cooperation plan to promote multilateralism in the era of global uncertainty. RCEP demonstrates the resilience of multilateralism and embodies the wisdom of countries at different levels of development to balance economic integration and political diversity in promoting multilateralism and economic globalization. Countries can unite within a mutually beneficial framework to form a community with a shared future. For example, in terms of trade in services, seven member countries including South Korea have adopted negative list commitments, while the remaining eight member countries including China have adopted positive list commitments and will convert to negative list commitments within six years after the agreement comes into effect. Underdeveloped countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar enjoy a 15 year transition period. The inclusiveness of RCEP provides experience for global multilateral cooperation mechanisms and serves as a model for maintaining economic globalization and multilateralism. The attractiveness and influence of RCEP are constantly increasing. Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and Chile have submitted formal applications to join RCEP, and some economies have expressed strong interest. As the largest economy of RCEP, China plays an active and crucial role in promoting high-level implementation of RCEP, strengthening connectivity, and advancing mechanism construction. Firstly, further deepen and expand the existing agreement rules, accelerate the expansion of "zero tariff" coverage, promote the early entry into force of the China ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 version and its synergy with RCEP, strengthen the opening up of service trade and investment, and urge all parties to take joint actions in expanding access to the service industry and connecting service markets, helping Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and other countries enhance their ability to implement the agreement and narrow the gap between member states. Secondly, we will explore new areas of cooperation between the digital economy and green economy, promote the construction of regional digital economy rules, explore the establishment of a "trusted data free flow zone", promote mutual recognition of standards such as electronic signatures and invoices, rely on China's digital ecosystem, and jointly develop cooperation in the fields of digital technology and artificial intelligence with other member countries; Deepen green economic cooperation, match China's advantages in renewable energy and green infrastructure with the needs of ASEAN's green transformation, jointly build green manufacturing bases for electric vehicles, photovoltaic products, etc., and transform green transformation into a new driving force for regional economic growth. Finally, promote expansion and regional coordinated development. Promote the expansion and upgrading of RCEP, actively respond to the accession applications of extraterritorial economies, promote the absorption of new extraterritorial member countries, realize the transformation from regional to trans regional free trade arrangements, promote the synergy between RCEP and the "the Belt and Road" initiative, strengthen the connectivity of infrastructure such as railways and ports, and at the same time benchmark with higher standard rules such as the CPTPP to promote the upgrading of the terms of the agreement. Over the past four years, China has fully implemented its commitments to tariff reduction and market opening under RCEP, becoming an important export market and import source country. The expansion of the China Laos railway, the new land sea channel in the west, and the RCEP multimodal transport mode have promoted regional connectivity, not only improving the efficiency of cross-border transport, but also promoting the integration of trade and investment, coordinated development of industries, cultural exchanges and mutual learning of civilizations. In the future, China will strive to shift RCEP from a "scale advantage" to a "quality advantage", and promote its development towards a higher-level free trade area through internal deepening, new field expansion, and external expansion. (New Society)