Xi Wins Leaders’ Support for Road Map on Asia-Pacific Trade Pact

By Bloomberg News  

President Xi Jinping wrapped up a summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders in Beijing with an agreement to press forward toward a regional free-trade pact that he says will be a historic achievement once realized.
Eight years after the idea was first proposed, Xi is pushing the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific as part of efforts to counter U.S. influence in the region. The Chinese leader has emphasized his nation’s growing economic clout throughout the forum and offered tens of billions of dollars to build infrastructure along key trade routes.
“We decided to kick off and advance the process in
a comprehensive and systematic manner towards the eventual realization of the FTAAP,” a declaration by the 21 APEC leaders stated. Officials will undertake a strategic study of the pact and report back by the end of 2016, they said.
Competition between different trade plans underscored the jockeying for position between the U.S. and China at this week’s meetings as President Barack Obama seeks to re-balance U.S. economic and strategic interests to Asia. Obama welcomed China’s push for the free-trade deal, a day after he hailed a separate trans-pacific agreement that doesn’t include the world’s second-largest economy.

‘Major Goal’

“To found an FTAAP has been a major goal of the APEC summit, but the discussion was getting nowhere until this Beijing summit, which set up a time-line to make it happen,” said Zhou Yongsheng, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. “China has been playing a leading role at this summit, and that’s a sign of things to come that the country will be more active on the world stage in the future.”
Xi’s use of the latest APEC gathering to hasten progress on the deal contrasted with China’s absence from talks for the separate U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Obama said in Beijing yesterday was close to being completed.
In an address today at the summit, Xi said APEC nations should now push ahead on the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific agreement, which would involve China and Russia, as the region seeks to find new drivers of growth. The business community wants to see such a zone established, he said.
Obama backed Xi’s agenda. “I want to commend China for focusing this year on what APEC can do to contribute to the realization of the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific,” Obama told the summit being held in a convention hall at Yanqi Lake, in northeastern Beijing. “I look forward to the day when all of our economies can be linked together in a high-standard, 21st century agreement.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin also supported a road map being developed in Beijing to forge ahead on the Asia-Pacific free trade zone. Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet is among those who have already voiced support for the plan.