The APEC economic leaders’ meeting does not start for two more days and it is already being buried under the weight of unrealistic and politically infeasible hopes and plans. While ministers and lower-level officials have been busy in Beijing this week, most of those attending the summit have not yet left home.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) last month said that his nation wanted to host a harmonious and smooth summit that would leave a deep impression on history. It will take more than a few cups of tea to achieve that, though no doubt Beijing’s spin masters will pull out all the stops to Photoshop a happy face onto group pictures.
The US and other prospective members of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are hoping to find some time on the summit’s sidelines to make headway in what increasingly looks like a dead-on-delivery creation because of Japan’s foot-dragging — although Taipei remains desperate to gain admittance to the club.
China has been excluded from the preliminary TPP discussions, which is why Beijing has come up with its own trade initiative, the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, which, not surprisingly, has found a central place on the summit’s agenda.
The rival initiatives have left many Asian nations in an uncomfortable situation, unwilling to publicly back either proposal for fear of upsetting either Washington or Beijing. Not to mention that there is also ASEAN’s proposal for a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to consider.
Senior officials appear to have reached a face-saving compromise this week by agreeing to launch what they called a “strategic study” on Beijing’s plan that could take up to two years to complete.
Also on the APEC agenda set by Beijing is a proposed statement against corruption, which would dovetail neatly with President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) domestic anti-graft campaign that has caught quite a few big fish.
However, Xi was embarrassed by Thursday’s report by the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency that members of his official delegation on a visit to Tanzania last year bought so much ivory that local prices doubled and the ivory was smuggled out of the country on diplomatic flights. Such reports do little to counter China’s image as a major player in the illegal ivory trade or criticism that Xi’s anti-graft targets have been selected for political reasons, despite the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ dismissal of the report as “groundless.”
Not all the issues that are casting a pall over the two-day summit involve Asia. With US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in attendance, Ukraine — and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 — will be a sore spot. Abbott has already warned that he is willing to tussle with Putin, regardless of the Kremlin boss’ judo blackbelt, saying that the Russian could not avoid a “conversation” over the fate of the airplane.
One big loser before the summit even starts has been President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who saw his hopes of finally being invited to join an APEC summit cruelly dashed by Beijing, despite months of comments that China’s hosting of the APEC meeting would be a perfect, “low-key” place for a Ma-Xi tete-a-tete.
Ma told journalists from three European media outlets in September that APEC was designed for “economic leaders to meet without using their official titles.” That Taiwan’s president has never been able to attend an APEC summit because of the group’s pandering to Beijing’s sensitive nature did not seem to be much of a deterrence in Ma’s team’s eyes.
However, Ma may not be the only Asian leader nursing bruised feelings. The likelihood of Xi meeting separately with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also looks remote, given territorial disputes, Abe’s nationalism and other sore spots.
Beijing might be able to create clear skies for the summit with draconian pollution control measures, but it cannot stage-manage everything.
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