Chinese Association for International Understanding

The APEC Beijing 2014 closed on November 11, 2014 at Yanqihu, Huairou District, Beijing. It was a fruitful APEC year. As the host of APEC 2014, China has worked hand in hand with other members for nearly a year, and signed the Beijing Programme, which set a new milestone in the history of APEC.

This year marked the 25th anniversary of APEC and the 20th anniversary of the Bogor Goals. For the second time to host the APEC meetings (after Shanghai’s successful hosting in 2001), China was acutely aware of the heavy responsibilities it shouldered, with the following reasons:

Firstly, the world economy is still in the period of in-depth adjustment, featuring both signs of recovery and problems of instable foundation of recovery, lack of promoting power and multi-speed recovery. The process of the realization of full recovery and healthy development of world economy will be long and tortuous.

As one of the most important engines of world economic recovery and development, Asia-Pacific region boasts the fastest economic development pace, largest development potential and most active cooperation in the world. The overall economic situation of Asia-Pacific economies is satisfying. However, great uncertainty lies ahead and the risks to Asia-Pacific economic growth continue to be on the downside. To maintain its function of world economic engine, Asia-Pacific region needs to create new carriages pulling its economy to increase.

Since its founding 25 years ago, APEC has created a new pattern of world economic geography. The 21 members of APEC account for 40 percent of the world population, 57 percent of the world economic aggregate and 46 percent of the world trade volume. Therefore, the establishment of an all-dimensional, multi-tiered and wide-ranging cooperation mechanism among the members of APEC played an active role in promoting common prosperity. Over the past 25 years, the APEC membership has increased from 12 to 21, making APEC an cooperation mechanism with the widest coverage, highest representativeness and highest level in this region as well as a major platform for all parties in the region to discuss on Asia-Pacific overall cooperation.

Meanwhile, the cooperation among APEC members is also facing some challenges. In recent years, with the emerging of international economic cooperation mechanisms such as G20 and the important role they played, the status and role of APEC were challenged. In addition, with the rapid development of multilateral, regional and sub-regional cooperation mechanism, APEC members are facing a “dilemma of options” when it comes to the direction and focus of cooperation. Trends towards integration and fragmentation are both on the rise. In terms of connectivity development, some areas of Asia-Pacific region are of the problems of none connectivity, connected but not passable or passable but with obstacles. To continue to play its leading and coordinating role, APEC needs to improve its vitality.

Under such circumstance, other economies of APEC all expect China to play a more important role and shoulder larger responsibilities. China is expected to, via hosting APEC Beijing 2014, inspire more wisdom, promote more practical measures and produce more tangible outcomes.

As an important member of the family of Asia-Pacific, China has been striving to play its constructive role in regional affairs by assuming the responsibility of promoting the prosperity and stability of the region. By hosting APEC 2014, China wishes to shape an Asia-Pacific partnership, jointly build an open economy in the Asia-Pacific region that is based on innovative development, interconnected growth, and shared interests, and revive the vitality of APEC by jointly planning the future development of APEC, thus enabling the Asia-Pacific region to continue to play its role of engine of world economic recovery. Via hosting APEC 2014, China wishes to create a favorable external environment for the realization of the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, realize the mutual transformation of Chinese opportunities and world opportunities, and play its role as an accountable power in global and regional affairs.

China has proposed the theme of “Shaping the Future Through Asia-Pacific Partnership” for APEC meetings. We hope to hold high the banner of win-win cooperation, seek common interests, jointly contribute to the development of Asia-Pacific region and realize common prosperity. We hope to promote all members of APEC, by taking a forward-looking and strategic vision, to develop future oriented bilateral relationship, seek new growth point which can drive the future development and create regional cooperation framework for the future. We hope to encourage all members of APEC to seek and expand their converging interests, overcome challenges and difficulties, combine into resultant force, tight their links of interests, thus forging partnerships of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation. This forward-looking theme won unanimous support from all parties of APEC.

In the above mentioned theme and context, APEC 2014 focused on three things: working for the economic integration of the region, promoting innovative development, economic reform and growth, and working to enhance connectivity and infrastructure development. The three focal points answered the major concerns in terms of contemporary regional economic cooperation, thus being the important domains and key points of future development of APEC partnership. APEC 2014 scored milestone achievements on each and every topic, thus drawing the future blueprint of Asia-Pacific partnership and shaped the future development of Asia-Pacific economic cooperation.

Topic One: Promote Regional Economic Integration Promoting regional economic integration is not only the common objective of all members, but also the important impetus for the stable, sustainable and robust growth of the Asia-Pacific region. Since the establishment of the Bogor Goals 20 years ago, with the liberalization and facilitation of regional trade and investment, positive progress has been made in terms of regional economic integration. However, facing a series of major challenges in the process of enhancing and promoting regional economic integration, APEC needs desperately to take decisive measures.

Regard to promoting regional economic integration, APEC Beijing 2014 made great efforts—some 100 initiatives and action projects were proposed, covering a wide variety of topics, such as free trade area development, cooperation based on global value chain, supply chain interconnection, innovation on cross-border E-commerce, next-generation trade and investment, etc.

The most important output with milepost significance was that after an intense series of talks, China and other members of APEC jointly launched the Beijing Roadmap for APEC’s Contribution to the Realization of the FTAAP. The Beijing Roadmap stipulated that FTAAP was a comprehensive and high-quality free trade agreement covering and dealing with the issue of next-generation trade and investment. The Beijing Roadmap proposed to base on the consensus and advance step by step with the objective of establishing the FTAAP as early as possible by building on ongoing regional undertakings. The Beijing Roadmap also offered concrete measures for establishing the FTAAP, including the launching of a collective strategic study on issues related to the realization of the FTAAP, development of information sharing mechanism related with FTAAP, the formulation and implementation of targeted capacity building programme. The implementation of Beijing Roadmap was a key step towards the substantial promotion of FTAAP negotiation. It was the first time that the issue of FTAAP entered into the track of practical promotion since this concept was put forward ten years ago and listed into the agenda of APEC eight years ago.

Growth and development have always been among the topics of APEC. With China’s proposal, APEC 2014 brought the topic of “innovative development, economic reform and growth” into the priorities of its conferences. It was an important sum-up of the dialogues on macro-economic policies over the past several years, aiming to build an open economic growth model that is based on innovative development, interconnected growth, and shared interests, and enable the Asia-Pacific to continue to act as an engine of the global economy.

The APEC economic leaders’ meeting implemented the APEC Accord on Promoting Innovative Development, Economic Reform and Growth. It was an important document promoting the institutionalization of cooperation on reform of economic structure, and was another milestone marking the contribution of APEC in promoting economic cooperation among its members. The Accord proposes that the APEC members conduct cooperation around five pillars, namely economic reform, new economy, innovative growth, inclusive support and urbanization. Under each topic, there were a series of major cooperation projects and initiatives, covering middle-income trap, internet economy, green economy, blue economy, technology transfer and dissemination, innovation environment and capability improvement, cultivation of innovative talents, entrepreneurship cultivation, employment promotion, health care improvement, food security, sustainable agriculture, women’s capacity-building, disaster prevention and relief, and anti-corruption. Among these topics and their responding achievements, some are of groundbreaking significance, such as crossing the “middle-income trap” with reform, shaping the future through Asia-Pacific partnership, strengthen cooperation on information and communication technology, and promote the development of internet economy, etc.

Connectivity will focus on the development of both the hardware and software and the growth of people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Hardware development refers to the connection and integration of infrastructure in terms of logistics, transportation, energy, and telecommunications, thus improving the efficiency of supply chain. Software development refers to the cooperation and consistency among economies in terms of regulations and procedures. People-to-people connectivity refers to the cross-border flow of people.

APEC has been attaching great importance to connectivity and infrastructure development. In recent years, connectivity and infrastructure development have become important agenda of APEC. APEC 2014 issued the APEC Connectivity Blueprint for 2015-2025, proposed to achieve the overarching goal of strengthening physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity, with the objective of achieving a seamless and comprehensively connected and integrated Asia-Pacific. The Connectivity Blueprint also proposed to establish Asia-Pacific infrastructure development partnership, strengthen mechanism integration and cooperation on regulation making, strengthen people-to-people exchange and facilitate the cross-border free flow of people, facilitate cross-border educational cooperation and achieve the goals of cross-border exchange of college students. In a word, the Connectivity Blueprint set an ambitious ten-year goal for the connectivity of Asia-Pacific region, making it the programmatic document guiding the cooperation on connectivity in this region.

During the APEC meetings, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed that a dedicated effort should be made to fulfill the dream of Asia-Pacific people. The contents of this dream include making concerted efforts for the prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region, continuing to lead the development trend of the world, and promoting the development of a big Asia-Pacific market for the better life of people. The Asia-Pacific dream is the common wish of the whole region and is in accordance with the “Chinese dream”. It is the further development of the peripheral diplomacy ideas of amicability, honesty, benefit and tolerance, and is bound to inject impetus into the regional economic cooperation.

China offered new theme and new framework for the economic cooperation of the Asia-Pacific region. The new theme was “Shaping the Future through Asia-Pacific Partnership”. The three topics and their corresponding outputs were the pillars supporting the new theme. The three topics are inseparably interconnected: “work for the economic integration of the region”, especially the progress of FTAAP, charted the future development trend of economic integration of this region; “promote innovative development, economic reform and growth” offered impetus for the sustainable and robust development of this region; and “work to ensure the enhanced connectivity and infrastructure development” entrenched the foundation of the Asia-Pacific region being the engine of the world economy. APEC 2014 made great contribution to the development of the Asia-Pacific family and the community of common destiny. In addition, it offered a pragmatic and far-sighted blueprint of the development of APEC in the next 25 years.

With the success of APEC Beijing 2014, the relationship and cooperation between China and the rest of the region will become closer and further entrenched. Via APEC Beijing 2014, it can be seen clearly that the economic reform and cooperation of China and the Asia-Pacific region are interconnected in terms of ideas, integrated in terms of interest, complementary in terms of contents and mutual beneficial in terms of cooperation. A series of proposals made by China, such as the silk road economic belt, the maritime silk road, and the Asian infrastructure investment bank, offered strong support to the infrastructure development and connectivity of this region, and will work together with the APEC Connectivity Blueprint for 2015-2025 to offer long-term impetus for the infrastructure development and connectivity of this region.