By pairing the latest data visualizations with in-depth sectoral analysis, we move beyond the raw numbers to explore how RCEP is reshaping regional supply chains and what the next phase of integration looks like for member states.
Quarter Tracker:
Annual Tracker:
With 2025 now behind us, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has entered its third full year of implementation. This marks a critical juncture to assess how intra-bloc trade has evolved. As tariff exemptions phase in and firms gain deeper familiarity with RCEP’s rules of origin and preferential market access, the agreement’s structural effects are becoming more visible. Using the AGI RCEP Trade Tracker, this annual insight compares trade performance from the pre-implementation period (2019–2022) to the post-ratification era (2022–2025). It investigates the extent to which the agreement has contributed to both total and sectoral trade growth within the bloc, revealing several critical trends:
Three years after its ratification, RCEP has matured into a foundational pillar of regional commerce, shielding member states from global volatility while forging new paths for integration. These latest figures move beyond raw data to reveal how RCEP is actively reshaping regional trade and which sectors are driving the $6 trillion milestone.
In terms of total imports and exports within the bloc, intra-RCEP trade reached US$6.039 trillion in 2025. This was slightly above the 2022 level of US$6.033 trillion, after trade fell back to US$5.505 trillion in 2023 amid global inflationary pressures and then recovered gradually in 2024. Compared with 2019, total intra-RCEP trade was up 34 percent from US$4.500 trillion, pointing to a significant expansion even relative to pre-COVID levels. In other words, even though post-ratification growth has been mixed across individual members, the overall scale of trade within the bloc remains very large, and RCEP continues to anchor one of the world’s biggest regional trade markets.
At the aggregate level, the share of intra-RCEP trade in members’ total global trade stayed close to 59 percent throughout 2019–2025, going down slightly from 58.8 percent in 2019 to 58.6 percent in 2025. In terms of import integration, the share of members’ imports sourced from the bloc rose from 62.5 percent in 2019 to 65.7 percent in 2025, while the share of exports sent to the bloc fell from 55.4 percent to 52.0 percent.
We can see the same trend in member-level growth: increasing import dependence was most visible in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, where the share of imports sourced from RCEP rose by 10.4 percent, 7.1 percent, and 4.6 percent respectively between 2022 and 2025. By contrast, only three members, Myanmar, Cambodia, and China increased the share of their exports going to the bloc over the same period. Smaller economies have been much more integrated into RCEP trade than the major members throughout 2019–2025, with China, Japan, and South Korea stayed far less dependent on the bloc. The clearest takeaway is that post-ratification integration has deepened more on the import side, especially for smaller members, while the major economies have continued to diversify their export markets beyond RCEP.
Trade statistics from 2022 to 2025 show mixed export growth in RCEP members’ exports to the bloc after the agreement entered into force. In the three years before RCEP ratification, most members recorded positive export growth to RCEP economies, with especially strong gains in Brunei (112.5 percent), Indonesia (77 percent), Laos (66.7 percent), China (48.4 percent), Malaysia (48.0 percent), Australia (40.4 percent), and Vietnam (32.3 percent). In the 3 years post-ratification, however, export growth weakened sharply for many members, and several economies turned negative, including Australia, Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, and the Philippines. At the same time, a smaller group saw stronger export growth after RCEP, most notably Cambodia (120.9 percent), Vietnam (47.2 percent), Myanmar (35.9 percent), and Laos (24.1 percent). China, Thailand, and Singapore also have slightly positive growth. This suggests that the agreement has not generated a uniform export boost across the bloc. Instead, its early effects appear concentrated in a limited number of members, while many others saw slower growth or outright declines in exports to the rest of RCEP.
Import performance within RCEP in the post-ratification period was more resilient than export performance, though still far from uniformly strong. One notable pattern is that smaller economies within the bloc generally performed better than the major economies. Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia continued to record solid import growth from the bloc after RCEP entered into force, while Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines saw more moderate import growth. By contrast, several major economies experienced declining imports in the post-ratification period, including China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. Taken together, the import data suggest that intra-RCEP demand held up better than export performance in some parts of the bloc, but the overall pattern remained uneven, with gains concentrated in a subset of economies rather than broadly shared across all members.
A key highlight of RCEP is its creation of the first formal tariff arrangement between Japan and both China and South Korea. South Korea, in turn, offered Japan and China (in addition to the China-Korea FTA) immediate duty-free access on 41.4 percent and 50.4 percent of tariff lines, respectively. Although these tariff cuts are phased in gradually, they should still be expected to generate at least some increase in trade over time, especially in product categories where no comparable preferential arrangement previously existed.
Using Japan as the reference point for measuring East Asia trade is especially useful, since China and South Korea already had a pre-existing bilateral trade agreement before RCEP. As suggested by the data, Japan’s trade with both China and South Korea weakened noticeably in the three years after RCEP, reversing the growth recorded in the three years before the agreement. Before RCEP, Japan’s exports to China and South Korea grew by 8.1 percent and 17.6 percent, respectively, while imports from the two economies rose by 12.4 percent and 14.1 percent. In the post-ratification period, however, all four measures turned negative: Japan’s exports to China and South Korea fell by 13.7 percent and 14.6 percent, while imports declined by 6.3 percent and 11.0 percent. Taken together, the pattern suggests that RCEP has not yet translated into stronger bilateral trade growth between Japan and its two Northeast Asian partners in the short run, and that wider economic conditions may have outweighed any early gains from tariff liberalization.
Beyond aggregate trade growth, it is also important to ask whether RCEP has begun to reshape competition in the sectors that matter most for the region’s industrial future. This is especially relevant in East Asia, where China, Japan, and South Korea are the bloc’s leading exporters and where RCEP’s tariff reductions and more flexible rules of origin are most likely to have meaningful competitive effects. We therefore turn to four strategic sectors that are central to current industrial and technological competition — electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, and total vehicles — to examine how export growth and market share within RCEP have shifted since ratification.
The clearest pattern in the figure is that China recorded by far the strongest post-RCEP export growth to the RCEP market across all four strategic sectors. From 2022 to 2025, China’s exports to the bloc grew by 362.6 percent in vehicles, 193.3 percent in electric vehicles, 41.5 percent in lithium-ion batteries, and 23.6 percent in semiconductors.
This stands in sharp contrast to Japan and South Korea. Japan’s post-RCEP performance was mixed: EV exports grew by 111.9 percent, but total vehicle exports were essentially flat at -0.4 percent, lithium-ion batteries rose by only 0.3 percent, and semiconductors declined by 9.6 percent. South Korea’s results were weaker in most sectors, with total vehicle exports falling by 11.0 percent, while semiconductors posted only modest growth of 4.0 percent. Taken together, the pattern suggests that post-RCEP gains in strategic sectors have not been evenly shared across the three Northeast Asian exporters. Instead, the strongest momentum has clearly been concentrated in China, particularly in sectors tied most directly to the green transition.
Growth rates show which exporter is expanding faster, but they do not tell us how the regional balance is changing in terms of market share. In sectors such as vehicles, EVs, batteries, and semiconductors, an exporter can record rapid growth while still remaining a minor player, or grow more slowly while still retaining a dominant position. The next set of figures therefore examines how China, Japan, and South Korea’s shares of the RCEP market shifted between 2019, 2022, and 2025.
The shifts across the four strategic sectors suggest that the post-ratification period did not produce a uniform regional rebalancing but instead marked a more uneven turning point that became visible by 2022 and much clearer by 2025. In 2019, China dominated EVs with a 92.4 percent market share and led lithium-ion batteries at 67.0 percent; South Korea led semiconductors at 47.8 percent, ahead of China’s 38.3 percent; and Japan dominated total vehicles with 82.8 percent of the market.
By 2022, China had already strengthened its position in the sectors most closely tied to the green transition. Its battery share jumped sharply to 89.4 percent, while its EV share remained above 90 percent. China also began entering the broader vehicle market more visibly, as Japan’s share fell from 82.8 percent to 72.5 percent and China’s rose from almost zero to 14.5 percent. Semiconductors remained comparatively stable at this stage, with South Korea still holding a narrow lead.
In 2025, China’s share rose to 97.0 percent in EVs and 94.0 percent in batteries, effectively consolidating dominance in the bloc’s new-energy supply chain. For total vehicles, China’s share climbed significantly to 33.8 percent, another 20 percent increase from 2022, overtaking South Korea's market share; Japan’s fell to 54.3 percent, leaving Japan still in the lead but with a much narrower margin than before. Semiconductors remained the most competitive of the four sectors: South Korea still led at 46.6 percent in 2025, but China had narrowed the gap to 43.3 percent. Taken together, 2022 appears to be the key turning point when China’s gains first became visible across the strategic sectors, while the 2025 data show those early gains hardening into a much more significant reallocation of market share.
Finally, we are also interested in how China’s exponential growth in strategic sector’s export to RCEP differs by individual market. The most dramatic single market was Indonesia, where China’s vehicle exports surged by 80,562.3 percent and EV exports by 10,304.4 percent. Other ASEAN markets also saw significant increases: China’s vehicle exports grew by 6,375.4 percent to Malaysia, 2,056.5 percent to Cambodia, and 1,177.7 percent to Vietnam, while EV exports rose by 1,138.6 percent to Myanmar, 665.3 percent to Cambodia, 607.1 percent to South Korea, and more than 500 percent to Singapore. These are not marginal changes, but a rapid expansion of China’s presence in the bloc’s transport-related sectors.
The battery and semiconductor story are more differentiated, but still points to strong Chinese gains. China’s lithium-ion battery exports to the bloc increased by 41.5 percent, from US$11.9 billion in 2022 to US$16.9 billion in 2025, with especially large jumps to Cambodia (1724.1 percent), Myanmar (844.0 percent), Australia (435.6 percent), and the Philippines (392.5 percent). In semiconductors, China’s exports to RCEP rose by 23.6 percent overall, from US$60.5 billion to US$74.8 billion, led by strong growth in Thailand (123.5 percent), Vietnam (111.9 percent), and the Philippines (88.3 percent), even though shipments fell to Japan (-18.7 percent), Singapore (-15.1 percent), and Malaysia (-12.9 percent). Taken together, the post-ratification pattern is not simply one of “mixed” results. It is one of very strong Chinese export expansion across the bloc, led overwhelmingly by EVs and vehicles, supported by substantial gains in batteries, and still positive overall in semiconductors despite declines in a few markets.
RCEP is a major institutional achievement for the region, bringing ASEAN, the Northeast Asian economies, and the Oceania members into a single trade framework for the first time. Although its direct effects on trade growth have so far been mixed, the agreement has still supported substantial trade within the bloc and contributed more clearly to several developing ASEAN economies where earlier liberalization was weaker. Its influence will likely grow further in strategic sectors as tariff cuts continue, and firms make fuller use of its rules of origin and preferential market access.
RCEP matters most where earlier trade arrangements left more room for new liberalization, especially in the China–Japan–Korea triangle and in smaller ASEAN economies such as Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. At the same time, the agreement’s biggest tariff gains do not appear all at once. Members phase them in gradually over roughly 10 years, so stronger effects should emerge over time rather than immediately. Just as important, lower tariffs on paper do not automatically produce stronger trade growth in practice. Firms need to know that these preferences exist, understand how to use them, and find it worthwhile to comply with the agreement’s rules. Uneven adoption is therefore likely one reason why RCEP’s early trade effects have looked mixed.
There is also clear room for improvement if RCEP is to deliver stronger results over time. Greater business awareness of RCEP preferences, wider use of self-certification, simpler and more transparent customs procedures, and more consistent implementation across members would all make the agreement easier to use.
The first priority is to update RCEP’s original HS 2012-based tariff schedules into the latest Harmonized System classification. Since the HS has continued to evolve to reflect new products, technologies, and supply-chain structures, reliance on older classifications makes it harder for firms to identify the correct tariff treatment and reduces the agreement’s practical usability in newer sectors. Updating the schedules into the latest HS version would improve accuracy, make cross-border trade administration easier, and help ensure that newer industries and supply chains can benefit more fully from RCEP’s preferential framework.
A second priority is to build a user-friendly online platform that allows businesses and individuals to look up member-specific tariff schedules, rules of origin, and documentary requirements directly by product code. At present, firms still face unnecessary difficulty in locating the relevant schedules that RCEP members offer to one another, especially across different product classifications and country pairs. A centralized platform that clearly displays these preferences in one place would reduce one of the most immediate barriers to adoption. It could also make use of recent advances in artificial intelligence to reduce language and technical barriers, helping firms — especially SMEs — identify the correct tariff treatment even when they do not know the professional or legal terminology for a product. In practice, RCEP’s effectiveness will depend not only on the tariff schedules themselves, but also on whether firms can access and use them at low administrative cost. The agreement has created important new opportunities, but its full value will depend on deeper adoption, easier day-to-day use, and continued upgrading as it approaches the 2027 general review.
Director, Asia Global Institute
Research Assistant, Asia Global Institute
Room 326-348, Main Building
The University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam, Hong Kong