APEC should give fuller scope to its role

Hanoi—The just concluded 14th Economic leaders’ Informal Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Hanoi has achieved its anticipated results.
Chinese President Hu Jintao said in his speech at the meeting that, the 21-member APEC should, with the focus of its emphasis on economic cooperation, play a bigger role in three areas, namely, supporting the development of the multilateral trading system, striving to meet the Bogor Goals, and exerting itself to enhance economic and technical cooperation.
The process of APEC trade and investment liberalization is inseparable from the world trade environment. At present, the global multilateral trading system has encountered an unprecedented dilemma and the Doha round of negotiations for the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been suspended indefinitely. The present deadlock is unfavorable for any country, and the restarting of trade talks brooks no delay. The voice of APEC, the most influential regional trade organization, carries weight.
Any significant step of the Doha talks from the very beginning cannot do without the timely support of APEC. At the recent Economic Leaders’ Informal Meeting, leaders of some countries promised to reduce subsidies to agriculture products and industrial goods tariffs and influence other members of the WTO with their collective actions, apart from the appeals to resume speedily the Doha negotiations and promptly end them. Obviously, APEC has a great role to play with bright prospects in supporting the growth of the multilateral trading system. On the other hand, APEC and WTO complement each other, and the potential success of the Doha negotiations will facilitate meeting the Bogor Goals for APEC.
It is the fundamental task of APEC to spur the trade and trade liberalization of the Asia-Pacific region. Bogor Goals have specified that the developed members would attain this task in the year 2010 and the developing members materialize the task in 2020. With the approaching of the first time table for the Bogor Goals, however, the leading developed members now retreat, divert others’ attention and wait on passively, and the reason behind is attributable to their unwillingness to see the developing members enjoy benefits from a decade-long transition period.
The Bogor Goals, the banner of APEC, however, should never be abandoned. In a bid to ensure the realization of the Bogor Goals, the APEC meeting in 2005 set forth the “Busan Roadmap” and the Just-ended meeting again released the “Hanoi Plan of Action,” which formulated still more detailed steps leading to the Bogor Goals. In view of the voluntary APEC principle, it is up to the attitude of all members to determine whether the “Hanoi Plan of Action” can truly be implemented.
With a high-degree openness economically, the developed members are fully qualified to set an example in carrying out the Bogor Goals, while reinforcing the plans of unilateral and collective actions to keep improving the supervisory and appraisal mechanism, so that member countries and regions are able to know clearly the progress of other members in implementing trade and investment liberalization.
Economic and technical cooperation is another wheel on a par with trade and free investment as well as a crucial means to narrow the development gap with other members and promote common prosperity. In recent years, nevertheless, APEC has had fewer cooperative projects with less satisfaction reported in the field of its economic and technological cooperation. If this situation goes on unchecked, the APEC members’ enthusiasm will be weakened and the future of APEC negatively affected. On the other hand, APEC should have a clearer aim and its members are more pragmatic and increasingly more capable to resist to challenges of all sorts and respond to some new problems emerging over recent years in areas of financial security, energy security and public health security.
In a nutshell, APEC will have a promising perspective only if its role in three areas can be brought into fuller play with concert efforts of its member countries and regions.

—Daily Mail, People’s Daily news exchange item