SEOUL, June 1 (Xinhua) – Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng and South Korean Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Yoon Sang-jick formally signed the Free Trade Agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea (FTA) on June 1 in Seoul on behalf of the governments respectively. They met the reporters together after the signing ceremony.

 

China-S.Korea FTA, a free trade agreement covering the most comprehensive issues and the highest bilateral trade volume signed by China so far, is a reciprocal, win-win agreement to both sides. The FTA achieved the goal of “generally balanced benefit, comprehensiveness and high-level.” According to the FTA, as for opening-up level, the bilateral goods trade liberalization percentage exceeds 90% of the tariffed issues and 85% of the total trade volume. The FTA scope covers 17 fields including goods trade, service trade, investment and rules, and the 21^st century-related economic and trade issues like E-commerce, competition policy, government purchase and environment. Meanwhile, both sides promised to continue the service trade negotiations in the mode of negative list, and roll out the investment negotiations based on the pre-establishment national treatment and negative list mode after the FTA comes into effect.

 

Source: June 1, 2015, portal website of the Central Government