中文
By Ong Tee Keat
Lead: China's hosting of APEC 2026 arrives at a pivotal moment for regional cooperation. With inclusivity and shared prosperity at the core of its agenda, Beijing is making the case that multilateralism, not fragmentation, is the Asia-Pacific's surest path forward.
The 2026 APEC "China Year" is poised to be a watershed moment, extending well beyond the scope of a single annual Economic Leaders' Meeting. Defined by a marathon of more than 300 events hosted in multiple Chinese cities, its significance transcends mere scale. Under the theme "Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together," China has pledged to "translate goals into action and blueprints into reality." This commitment arrives at a critical juncture, rekindling a regional ideal that the world watches with bated breath. In an era of waning globalization, APEC 2026 seeks to serve as a beacon for trans-Pacific community building.
The idea of an Asia-Pacific community rooted in regionalism is far from new, predating APEC's own founding in 1989. The concept gained new momentum in October 2013, when Chinese President Xi Jinping debuted the "Asia-Pacific community of common destiny" at the APEC CEO Summit. He called for pro-growth collaborative engagement and coordinated development. That vision was later refined into the "Asia-Pacific community with a shared future" during consecutive APEC meetings from 2020 to 2022, further reaffirming China's commitment to community-building efforts across the region.
The Chinese blueprint envisions an inclusive intergovernmental society of cooperative, interdependent economies. Crucially, it eschews mandatory political integration and the requirement of "like-mindedness" in subscribing to American neoliberal values such as democracy and human rights. It represents a pragmatic policy variant of the broader community with a shared future for humanity, prioritizing economic synergy over ideological conformity.
Despite its non-binding nature, APEC remains the premier institutional platform for regional integration. Its 21 member economies account for 61% of global GDP and 46% of world trade — a critical mass indispensable to the international trading system. Yet APEC's role as a manager of economic interdependence has repeatedly been bypassed, if not usurped, by smaller groupings commissioned by its own member economies to serve their geopolitical interests.
Japan's "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" (FOIP) and the U.S.-led "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity" (IPEF) are prime examples. Despite geopolitical contestation, APEC retains functional relevance as an inclusive, consensus-based dialogue mechanism for rules-based economic cooperation. Both IPEF and FOIP, by contrast, represent a shift toward selective, geopolitically driven arrangements designed specifically to counter China's rising influence.
The Japan-sponsored FOIP, framed as a strategy to counter "unilateral changes to the status quo," unmistakably targets China — though Tokyo's assertion remains unsubstantiated. Similarly, the IPEF — while ostensibly focused on 21st-century rules for supply chains and clean energy — was conspicuously designed to exclude China, the world's second-largest economy. Both frameworks are explicitly restricted to "like-minded partners," a contemporary euphemism for ideological alignment that is antithetical to the broad-based inclusivity APEC represents.
Critics have long charged that APEC is too slow and too broad to address acute challenges — an argument that has been used to justify the creation of both the FOIP and the IPEF. Yet as APEC members, both the U.S. and Japan could and should have pursued their concerns within the framework itself, rather than creating parallel arrangements outside it.
Over nearly four decades, APEC has proven its efficacy, cutting average intra-regional tariffs from 17% to 5%, alongside substantial growth in regional trade flows and cross-border investment. As APEC matures, more pressing challenges have emerged: supply chain connectivity and resilience, the compatibility of competing technology standards, and the proliferation of diverse free trade agreements. These complexities require a relevant architecture to collectively coordinate mitigation efforts under the APEC framework. In this context, the call for Asia-Pacific community building is a timely response to shifting global dynamics.
Taking the lead in spearheading the move, China, as the rotating host this year, has an edge over others in shaping the agenda with pressing priorities. The Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) — a 20-year-old initiative to unify diverse regional agreements, notably the CPTPP and RCEP, into a single high-quality FTA — deserves prioritization as regional dynamics continue to shift.
While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is progressing toward the fruition of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) 3.0 with China, the ultimate goal of establishing a comprehensive free trade area encompassing all 21 APEC economies remains distant. The FTAAP's projected contribution of $2.4 trillion to global output — a figure that was anticipated by 2025 — has yet to be realized.
This perceived failure to deliver looms large in critiques of APEC. At the heart of the issue is the forum's Voluntarism Principle, which remains the elephant in the room.
Unlike treaty-based organizations, APEC allows members to tailor commitments to shared goals on a voluntary, non-binding basis. Rather than rigid legal agreements or penalties, commitments are pursued through differentiated implementation timetables, with member economies submitting Individual Action Plans, detailing voluntary steps to liberalize trade and investment.
Critics argue this "pledge-then-deliver" approach has bred passivity and procrastination, undermining APEC's efficiency and relevance.
By placing a review of the Aotearoa Plan of Action — the roadmap for achieving the Putrajaya Vision 2040 — on this year's agenda, China is pushing APEC toward greater accountability in delivering on its long-term commitments. In rallying for the building of an open Asia-Pacific community, China is well aware that the way forward for APEC goes well beyond the tariff reduction and trade facilitation envisioned in the past.
For APEC to steadily advance toward the building of a free trade area, all other members, particularly Japan and the U.S., should embrace an open, inclusive and win win cooperation approach, strengthening their collaboration and coordination with China.
As far as new economic drivers are concerned, artificial intelligence, the green energy transition and the digital economy — once dubbed "next-generation issues" — are now integral to the APEC agenda. Having proven its technological prowess in the new engines of economic growth, China, alongside ASEAN, can readily help APEC take a leaf from the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 playbook, where the digital economy and green transformation are set to dominate the new phase of economic collaboration. This will underpin Asia-Pacific community building and the shared aspiration of pursuing common prosperity through economic cooperation.
Ong Tee Keat is president of the Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific (BRICAP).
