Corruption, however, while a persistent illness with a debilitating and self-generating momentum, is not exclusive to China. If truth be told, China’s largesse abroad is also a major source of corruption and fraud, especially when it involves government-to-government transactions where transparency and accountability are absent.

Beijing’s air pollution – and the stark contrast between how the rich and poor are able to respond to the problem, is a theme of developing economics. To address the current structural imbalance Barbier suggests tackling the twin problems of excessive environmental degradation and insufficient human capital, which he calls a “Balanced Wealth Strategy.”

The free-trade deal seems more firmly rooted in politics than economics, lacking both fairness and transparency, and that doesn’t bode well for a harmonious world order.

For those who oppose the TPP, much as been made of the secret nature in which the treaty was negotiated. Walker Rowe summarizes some major sectors that will be affect by the treaty, and thus trying to influence a rather fractured and unpopular trade agreement.

While the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership has potential to split Asia Pacific, it could be used as a foundation for truly free trade, along with other free trade plans in the region.

Their economies have never been more interdependent, and many global and regional key issues hinge on their collaboration. Simply put, the two powers just cannot afford to head into a zero-sum game due to their increasing convergence of interests.

A recent McKinsey Global Institute report titled "The China Effect on Global Innovation" finds that China has the potential to evolve from an innovation sponge - absorbing and adapting global technologies and knowledge - to an innovation leader. As a matter of fact, China is far better at innovation than is generally known and, in some kinds of innovation, is already emerging as a global leader.

Because existing trade terms mean 80% of TPP members’ exports to the U.S. are already duty-free while even a bigger percentage of China’s manufactured goods enjoy that status, the agreement’s bottom-line impact on trade is negligible for now. The deal is more about who gets to write the long-term rules of global governance, which for China is both a challenge and an opportunity to reshape its economy in the direction it was going anyway.

Based on what we know from leaks, Transatlantic and Pacific trade deals disproportionally empower corporations. Instead of trade regionalism driven by corporatism and overrated security imperatives, the EU, the USA and China, should join forces and with a trilateral trade commission shape a vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

Open to insiders and restrictive to outsiders, as they lower trade barriers among member economies, regional FTAs tend to build higher trade barriers against non-member economies. Often tools for working around loopholes in the WTO, such regional agreements buck the trend toward globalization.