The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest free trade agreement in terms of economic size and population, came into effect on Jan 1.

The RCEP is made up of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations along with China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

Shanghai, the economic center in East China, recorded $1.86 billion of Chinese investment in RCEP member countries from January to October last year, up 26.47 percent year-on-year.

The city's newly signed contracts for foreign projects in RCEP countries amounted to $1.6 billion, accounting for 34.49 percent of the city's total, according to Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.

In the past three years, Shanghai's foreign trade enterprises have mainly invested in Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan among the RCEP member countries.

Shanghai Decent Investment (Group) Co Ltd, in October 2013, together with Indonesia's Bintang Delapan Group, built a China-Indonesia Comprehensive Industrial Park in Indonesia. 

In 2021, the park achieved sales revenue of more than $17 billion and created more than 42,000 direct and 60,000 indirect jobs, greatly promoting the local economic and social development of Indonesia. 

Such cooperative overseas economic and trade zones are  important ways of helping Shanghai's enterprises explore overseas markets. Not only will it enable Shanghai's competitive industries to form an agglomeration effect overseas, but also greatly reduce the risks and costs of the enterprises.

To this end, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce plans to further guide and support the existing cooperative overseas economic and trade zones to play a greater role under the RCEP accord, and encourage enterprises from Shanghai and other places in the Yangtze River Delta region to go abroad as a group to pursue interconnected development.