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Most conspicuously, the pact does not include India, another regional giant. The New Delhi government pulled out of the negotiations in July. China had rebuffed India’s demands for a more ambitious pact that would have done far more to tie together the region’s economies, including trade in services as well as trade in goods.

He Weiwen, a former Commerce Ministry official in Beijing and prominent Chinese trade policy expert, said that Sunday’s pact nonetheless represented a big step forward.

“The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, due to its size, will certainly contribute to world free trade,” he said.

The R.C.E.P.’s lower trade barriers could encourage global companies trying to avoid Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese-made goods to keep work in Asia rather than shift it to North America, said Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

“R.C.E.P. gives foreign companies enhanced flexibility in navigating between the two giants,” she said. “Lower tariffs within the region increases the value of operating within the Asian region, while the uniform rules of origin make it easier to pull production away from the Chinese mainland while retaining that access.”

The prospect of China’s forging closer economic ties with its neighbors has prompted concern in Washington. President Barack Obama’s response was the T.P.P., which had extensive provisions on services, intellectual property, independent labor unions and environmental protection. It also called for limits on state sponsorship of industries, serving as both a challenge to China and an enticement for Beijing to relax its grip on its economy, the world’s second largest.

The T.P.P. did not include China but encompassed many of its biggest trading partners, like Japan and Australia, as well as Chinese neighbors like Vietnam and Malaysia. After President Trump pulled the United States out of that arrangement, the other 11 countries then went ahead with it on their own.