The signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on 15 November, 2020 marks a milestone for East Asian regionalism. It shows ASEAN’s determination to unify existing ASEAN+1 trade agreements and to showcase the bloc’s central role in regional cooperation. As former Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa noted recently, the RCEP was “a response by ASEAN leaders to a series of initiatives that did not provide for ASEAN centrality”.