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On January 1, 2026, it will be four years since the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Pang Guanglian, a member of the Party Committee’s Standing Committee, deputy secretary-general, and head of the Foreign Investment Committee of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, said that over the past four years, the policy benefits associated with RCEP have continued to materialize, injecting new momentum into China’s petrochemical industry and facilitating its transition from growth in scale to improvements in quality. According to customs data, from January to November 2025, the trade volume of petroleum and chemical products between China and other RCEP** members was 239.3 billion US dollars, of which imports amounted to 140.7 billion US dollars and exports to 98.6 billion US dollars. Four years since the entry into force of RCEP, its impact in reshaping the regional economic and trade landscape has continued to be evident in China’s petrochemical trade patterns. According to the HS code statistics from the General Administration of Customs, the value of petrochemical trade within this region in 2022 was 292.8 billion US dollars, accounting for 27.8% of China’s total petrochemical exports. By 2024, the share of petrochemical trade within the RCEP region rose to 28.3%, against the trend. Tariff concessions have driven rapid growth in the export of domestic competitive products such as refined oil and pesticides, while the rules of origin facilitate regional coordination within industrial chains such as those for synthetic fibers, accelerating the process of regional integration. China is the world’s largest energy consumer, but it has limited domestic oil and gas resources and relies heavily on imports. Within the RCEP region, Australia and ASEAN countries **(such as Malaysia and Indonesia) possess abundant oil and gas resources, serving as important sources of energy for China. China’s imports under RCEP** consist mainly of energy resources and high-end chemicals, with these two categories accounting for over 80% of the total imports. “Initially, the complex rules for tariff reductions and the unfamiliar procedures for origin certificates forced us to slow down our expansion into new markets. ”Zhang Na, the customs department head at Betray New Materials Group Co., Ltd., said. After mastering the procedures for applying for RCEP origin certificates, by 2025 Betray submitted 207 such certificates, covering a goods value of 370 million yuan; as a result, tariff reductions worth approximately 7.3 million yuan were obtained in the importing countries. RCEP has 15 member countries, and as the world’s largest free trade area covering approximately one-third of the global population and economic output, Chinese companies have seen an increasing ability to make use of the rules under RCEP over the past four years. More and more enterprises are able to make use of the provisions of these agreements to reduce costs and expand their markets; RCEP provides a broader platform for domestic chemical companies to go global. At the same time, the industrial and economic structures of the member countries are highly complementary, and by continuously optimizing production networks, cooperation and division of labor among them have been enhanced. Taking lithium batteries as an example, as a core sector of the global value chain, the division of labor among its upstream and downstream industries directly reflects the level of integration in regional production networks. China holds technical advantages in the research, development, and manufacturing of high-end components such as battery materials, separators, and battery cells, while ASEAN has cost and manufacturing advantages in labor-intensive areas such as battery assembly and downstream application integration; thus, the supply chains of the two sides are closely integrated. Data from the General Administration of Customs show that China’s exports of lithium battery products to ASEAN increased from $3.505 billion in 2021 to $5.511 billion in 2024, with an average annual growth rate of 16.28%. From January to November 2025, export values reached as high as $6.828 billion, setting another record and demonstrating the synergistic effects of regional production networks. “In 2023, the company established an overseas warehouse in Indonesia, resulting in a growth of over 50% in export volumes. The number of customers benefiting from the RCEP tariff benefits has increased from two at first to more than a dozen today. ”said Li Ming, manager of the logistics department at Zhejiang Wankai New Materials Co., Ltd. According to statistics, in the four years since RCEP came into effect, certificates under RCEP were issued for export goods worth 830 million yuan, resulting in tariff reductions of approximately 42 million yuan in the importing countries. It is understood that the number of RCEP origin certificates issued by Hangzhou Customs increased from 52,800 in 2022 to 87,100 in the first 11 months of 2025. The number of enterprises within its jurisdiction that received such certificates rose from over 2,300 to nearly 3,200, with industries such as plastic products and chemicals benefiting significantly from this. Looking to the future, experts recommend that China use RCEP as a strategic foundation to optimize its energy layout and export structure, deepen regional technical cooperation and industrial chain coordination, accelerate the substitution of imported goods with domestic alternatives and pursue green transformation, enhance its regional influence, and strengthen its institutional influence, in order to build a more resilient and competitive regional industrial chain system.