Next week, the port city of Tianjin, China will play host to government officials 10 Asean countries along with India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea along with that of the host country. These 16 countries are attending the 15th round of negotiation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Unlike the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), the RCEP does not include the US, but does include two of the world’s fastest growing economy - India and China - who are not part of the TPPA. These two so-called free trade agreements are in reality a competition between the RCEP and the TPPA, and ultimately a battle to determine whether the US or China makes the rules in this region.

China has been marching toward the most efficient form of capitalism for some time - totalitarian capitalism. Capitalism without the pretense of democracy. So similar to previous rounds of the RCEP negotiations, it is expected that there will be little or no space for civil societies, parliamentarians, and the media - while corporate lobbyist gets their own personal invitations.

But the rules that both the US and China are attempting to set hardly vary. They are both designed to advance the interests of corporations, of capital. Together, they are designed to finally eliminate any alternative economic models, any resistance to corporate power, cement the loss of national sovereignty, destroying representative, accountable and pro-people government.

Under the RCEP, all 16 countries are expected to harmonise their laws in a broad range of domestic policies - goods and services, intellectual property rights (IPR), investment rules, rules of origin, competition and dispute settlement. This presents a violation of a country’s domestic policy-making, compelling governments to legislate in the interests of foreign corporations instead of the interests of its citizens.

Rather than being about ‘free-trade’, the RCEP will impose corporate rules aimed to protect their monopoly. Patents for medicines, for example can be extended, and in countries like Thailand, China and India - three key producers of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) and generic medicines globally.

This is not ‘free-trade’; it is a deliberate attack, by large pharmaceutical corporations on the generic medicine of the developing world. India for example, produces eighty percent of the world’s supply of generic HIV/AIDS medicines - without which, poor patients will simply die.

Perhaps the most corrosive aspect of the RCEP is the Investor State Disputes Settlement (ISDS) provisions which allow foreign investors to sue governments when laws or policies threaten their profits and investments. It provides a new international legal system available, only to foreign companies who can ignore national laws and even constitutions.

Disputes are heard by a tribunal of corporate lawyers that is not open to the public, is not subject to appeal, does not have an independent judiciary and can make contradictory decisions. It is an international legal order, available to only the world’s 1 percent (93 percent of suits come from companies with annual profits of more than US$1billion).

As the US and China battle to ‘set the rules’ for the Asia-Pacific region, the marginalised women, workers, farmers of the region will continue to pay the price for these so-called free trade.

This week, civil societies and social movements in the region are creating a storm, so that when governments meet next week, they must ensure that the RCEP should not become a new form of colonisation - of corporations and of superpowers. Because, this storm of people’s movements and show of strength will only continue to rise.