China keen to promote its idea for Asia-Pacific trade pact at Apec in Manila
Beijing will report back on a study for Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific just days after the release of details of a US-led agreement
China will seek to push its own vision of an Asia-Pacific trade pact at a regional summit next week, senior officials said yesterday, just weeks after the release of a rival US-led deal that pointedly excludes the Asian giant.
Beijing sought to promote the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, or FTAAP, at last year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which it hosted.
At the meeting’s close, participants endorsed efforts to explore the idea, which was seen as a potential rival to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a Washington-led trade coalition that includes the region’s largest economies, except for China.
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Little has been heard of China’s free-trade area since, while the long-secret text of the American-led pact was released on Thursday, receiving cheers from global business interests and jeers from labour, environmental and health groups, which vowed to fight its ratification.
China said it would report the findings of a study on the free-trade area at next week’s Apec summit in the Philippines, which President Xi Jinping will attend.
“We need to actively work for the establishment of FTAAP,” Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said, adding that it would be “a facilitator for regional integration in Apec”.
Although it gathers some of the world’s most important leaders, the group’s annual meeting is a better known for its group photos of powerful people in matching shirts than substantive deals.
