On February 21-March 3, the 17th RCEP negotiations was held in Kobe, Japan. More than 700 representatives from 10 ASEAN countries, China, Japan, ROK, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Secretariat of ASEAN attended the meeting. This is the first negotiation held in 2017, and the working group meetings including goods, services, investment, intellectual property, e-commerce, as well as laws and mechanism, were also held at the same time. All the parties made further efforts, and accelerated the texts consultation on market accession of three core fields including goods, services and investment, as well as other fields, so as to promote the negotiations to step into more substantial stage.

The parties also discussed the RCEP negotiation plan in 2017 to speed up the progress of negotiations. It is decided to hold the 18th negotiations on May 2-12 in Philippines.