Commenting on the significance of the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting and the 25th anniversary of APEC, scholars said that the theme of this year’s summit in Beijing—Shaping the Future through Asia-Pacific Partnership—represents the desire of the 21 APEC member nations to seek solutions for common problems while fostering long-term development and stronger relations in the region.

The two documents namely “The Statement on the 25th Anniversary of APEC: Shaping the Future through Asia-Pacific Partnership” and “The Beijing Agenda for an Integrated, Innovative and Interconnected Asia-Pacific” are of historic significance since the Boger Declaration in 1994 and will usher in a new phase of APEC cooperation, scholars say.

Three key priorities

The Beijing summit made great progress in terms of the meeting’s three key priorities: advancing regional economic integration; promoting innovative development, economic reform and growth,and strengthening comprehensive connectivity and infrastructure development, said Li Xiangyang, president of the National Institute of International Strategy under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Leaders made a substantive move toward regional economic integration by approving a roadmap that lays the foundation for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), Li said.

“Thanks to the roadmap, the summit has become a milestone in the development of APEC,” Li said. “Involving the participation of 21 APEC members, the roadmap embodies the kind of equality and inclusiveness China promotes. It is bound to deliver gains to all economies on both sides of the Pacific and inject new impetus to the economic growth of the Asia-Pacific region,” he added.

All 21 APEC members as well as other countries, like India and Mongolia, in the “One Belt and One Road” initiative agreed to enhance connectivity. In fact, the purpose of the initiative is to realize connectivity. And China has demonstrated its ability and commitment through its efforts to promote the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Silk Road fund of $40 billion, Li said.

Su Changhe, a professor from the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, said that infrastructure development and connectivity are of vital importance in the regional economic integration.

“Many regional integration initiatives are trapped in a deadlock and are beset with obstacles in terms of implementation, but the APEC Blueprint on Connectivity adopted at the summit has identified the roots of the problem, and members are determined to realize the vision of enhancing hardware, software and people-to-people connectivity while taking economic cooperation to the next level,” said Su.

At the summit, China offered to provide $10 million to improve capacity building for Asia-Pacific economic integration. Sheng Bin, president of the China APEC Academy, said interdependence among countries has grown due to great changes in the global and regional international production system. In line with this trend, the amount of multinational goods and services has increased accordingly, Sheng said.

Turning point

China believes in the principle that agreements in diplomacy and trade should be independent, voluntary and non-binding, and this approach has also been extended to the nation’s dealings with APEC. Unlike the European Union, which forms a trade bloc, APEC emphasizes concerted unilateralism and open regionalism, Sheng said.

“From the beginning, APEC has never been suited for establishing an institutionalized cooperation mechanism because huge economic disparities exist within APEC’s membership, which includes developed, developing and emerging markets,” Sheng continued.

If the approval of the FTAAP roadmap shows a principle of inclusiveness, the establishment of an Asia-Pacific free trade area signifies that APEC has shifted from reaching agreements to developing an institutionalized mechanism,” Sheng said, adding that a timetable for an Asia-Pacific free trade zone and the groundwork will first require a feasibility study in the region. “However, APEC members still have disagreements between developed and developing countries that need to be overcome,” Li said.

Li explained that economic globalization has benefited all countries in the past 20 years of development, but in terms of profit distribution, developed countries consider themselves to be the losers while emerging economies, represented by China, are the winners.

Therefore, developed countries have proposed “re-globalization,” which in essence means to redefine trade rules in a way that favors their comparative advantages, such as environmental protection, intellectual property rights and labor. However, emerging economies and developing countries in general are still at the stage of industrialization, making these “highthreshold” trade rules clearly unfair, Li said. Given the complex composition of APEC’s membership, its FTA talks have set an example for multilateral trade negotiations under the WTO framework, said Pang Zhongyin, a professor from the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China.

The consensus reached at the Beijing summit hints at a turning point for APEC in terms of realizing an institutionalized mechanism, Pang said, proposing that a new format be utilized for APEC in the future.

Pang suggested that the host nation help coordinate three consecutive summits in order to better supervise and implement the agenda and declarations, thus promoting the formation of a binding mechanism for APEC.

International cooperation

APEC members adopted the Beijing Declaration on Fighting Corruption establishing a cross-border law enforcement network to strengthen transnational anticorruption cooperation and to deny safe haven for corrupt officials and their illicit assets in this region.

Li said that domestic and foreign affairs in China will be more closely linked as it develops. For example, the “One Belt and One Road” initiative is part of the openingup plan, but it will also promote domestic reform, which coincides with the idea of “promoting reform through opening up” proposed by the 18th central Committee of the CPC.

As China further opens its economy and increases its participation in regional affairs, global governance is bound to become an important priority. The FTAAP, which China proposed, is a significant contribution to regional as well as global governance. However, this effort might be interpreted as a challenge to the existing Western-dominated international order, however, Pang said, “China is not a revolutionary within the world order but a reformer”.

Su said, in the new situation, diplomacy will play a more important role in the modernization of national governance systems while the country’s international affairs management functions will not be neglected. As China becomes further involved in the provision of international goods, international public administration capacity building will become a new industry.

“In the APEC meeting, China offered to provide training for 20,000 people from other countries in the field of connectivity,”Su said. “In terms of human resource strategy towards international organizations, China should provide qualified personnel to existing international organizations while training international administration personnel in bilateral and multilateral systems.”

The Chinese link: http://www.cssn.cn/xk/xk_wtbl/201411/t20141117_1401307.shtml

Translated by Yang Xue