Research on the Impact of China’s Accession to CPTPP on Service Trade under the Background of RCEP

Against the backdrop of the accelerated development of the global digital economy and the deepening of regional economic integration, service trade has become an important engine for the high-quality development of China’s economy. Based on the reality that RCEP has already come into effect, this paper constructs a GTAP model containing both traditional and digital service sectors to simulate and assess the potential impact of China’s further accession to the CPTPP on service trade. The simulation results show that joining the CPTPP on the basis of RCEP will generate a significant “superposition effect,” with major macroeconomic indicators and social welfare outperforming the scenario of implementing RCEP alone. With the elevation of opening-up standards, the scale of China’s service trade will expand significantly, and the export growth potential of the digital service trade sector is higher than that of the traditional service sector, presenting obvious industry heterogeneity.