{"id":36029,"date":"2018-11-01T13:12:20","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T07:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=36029"},"modified":"2018-11-01T13:12:20","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T07:42:20","slug":"digital-trade-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/digital-trade-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital trade games:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/digital-trade-games\/article19326776.ece\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Digital trade games<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: (The Hindu, Editorial)<\/span> (Global Digital Trade Paradigm at Proposed RCEP Treaty of ASEAN countries)<\/p>\n<p><b>Background:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to broaden and deepen the engagement among ASEAN countries, the leaders of 16 participating countries established the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to enhance parties\u2019 participation in economic development of the region.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, the negotiators of ASEAN countries are meeting at Hyderabad from July 21 to 26, to discuss the negative impact of the fresh round of free trade agreements on e-Commerce, intellectual property rights, and access to medicine, on marginalised communities, agriculture, labour and social security, public services, and fisheries and trade.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>About RCEP:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The RCEP was built upon the existing ASEAN+1 FTAs with the spirit to strengthen economic linkages and to enhance trade and investment related activities as well as to contribute to minimising development gap among the parties.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In August 2012, the 16 Economic Ministers endorsed the Guiding Principles and Objectives for Negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The RCEP negotiations were launched by Leaders from 10 ASEAN Member States (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam) and six ASEAN FTA partners (Australia, People\u2019s Republic of China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, and New Zealand) during the 21<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">st<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ASEAN Summit and Related Summits in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in November 2012. The RCEP negotiations commenced in early 2013.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The objective of launching RCEP negotiations is to achieve a modern, comprehensive, high-quality, and mutually beneficial economic partnership agreement among the ASEAN Member States and ASEAN\u2019s FTA partners.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has free trade agreements with six partners namely People\u2019s Republic of China (ACFTA), Republic of Korea (AKFTA), Japan (AJCEP), India (AIFTA) as well as Australia and New Zealand (AANZFTA).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Area under RCEP Negotiation:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The RCEP negotiation includes: trade in goods, trade in services, investment, economic and technical cooperation, intellectual property, competition, dispute settlement, e-commerce, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and other issues.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Issue of Digital Trade and e-commerce at RCEP negotiations:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The focus of the negotiators will be on e-commerce and global data trade. The issue under discussion will placing limitations on digital policymaking by any country to protect \/ promote the e-commerce company of respective country. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India has been opposing binding norms on opening up the e-commerce sector at the level of RCEP as well as the global level (WTO) talks on grounds including that it (India) is yet to have a comprehensive national policy on the topic.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many RCEP nations including Australia, Japan and China, are pushing for inclusion of \u2018Terms Of Reference\u2019 for RCEP negotiations concerning e-commerce. This is with a view to have some binding commitments from the RCEP members on liberalising e-commerce and ensure that the final pact has a separate chapter on e-commerce.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Concern over Digital Trade:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No countries could agree to let the data flow freely across borders.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The data that is increasingly basic to banking, retailing, the defence forces, public services, health and education services etc. are not the simple date but digital information or digital intelligence which can be meaningfully negotiated at global trade talks, because each of these services have different dynamics and implications and needs different treatment.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It may be too early to understand the real nature of these emergent digitalised services<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Digital intelligence is going to be by far the single most important economic resource and it believes that whoever has it controls everything. Secondly, today the the digital intelligence tends to concentrate strongly around a few poles or centres for example Uber has worldwide intelligence about urban transport; Monsanto is working on a global agriculture networking and intelligence platform; for General Electric etc.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The issues of e-commerce or digital trade are much larger because today every major economic and social activity will be underpinned by digital intelligence.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The opening of digital trade will make the domestic e-commerce companies more vulnerable and less competitive.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>India\u2019s Strategy:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India must not succumb to global digital trade paradigms and rules that back predatory business.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India must consider a digital industrialisation strategy that ensures that the immense value arising from digitally-induced efficiencies in every sector is retained within India and not allowed to flow out uninhibitedly.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If India allows such outflows of data intelligence then it will soon find itself on the wrong side of digital colonisation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India must put its digital house in order before thinking of getting a part of the global digital pie, as China did.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Domestic digital strengths should first be developed on the back of its big domestic market.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These is a requirement of an independent digital policy, including protections for India\u2019s incipient digital industry. This will not only ensure that our economy and society are not controlled from outside but also protect existing jobs and create many more new ones.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Conclusion:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India has just begun some good policy work for a data economy and society, with its \u201cDigital India\u201d policies, and development of \u201cdigital public goods\u201d like the <\/span><b>IndiaStack<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of basic digital platforms and infrastructural data systems that are open to all. These can be very helpful in developing a local digital industry. However, such efforts can get nullified if India succumbs to global digital trade paradigms and rules developed by countries that back predatory global digital business, by accepting the \u201cfree global flow of data\u201d and sacrificing its digital policymaking powers and sovereignty.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital trade games: (The Hindu, Editorial) (Global Digital Trade Paradigm at Proposed RCEP Treaty of ASEAN countries) Background: In order to broaden and deepen the engagement among ASEAN countries, the leaders of 16 participating countries established the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to enhance parties\u2019 participation in economic development of the region. Recently, the negotiators&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/digital-trade-games\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Digital trade games:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704955878},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}