LAST TIME China hosted the Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in 2001, then-President Jiang Zemin vowed to follow international rules as his nation was on the cusp of joining the World Trade Organization.
As leaders from the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum gather in Beijing next week, they’ll visit an economy that’s about eight times larger and be hosted by a leader now seeking to reshape global rules and organizations.
Trumpeting China’s “great rejuvenation,” President Xi Jinping has been pushing regional maritime claims and expanding its economic clout with neighbors via trade and investment. In the days leading up to the meeting, China has sought to set the agenda, backing a regional free-trade zone over US-led trade-pact talks, signing agreements on a $50-billion regional bank to finance infrastructure, and announcing a new fund to rekindle the historic Silk Road trading route.
“Back in 2001 China was asking humbly to get into the room; in 2014 China wants to take center stage,” said Chen Fengying, a senior fellow researcher with the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a government
research agency, in Beijing. “China is now playing offensive, not defensive.”
As China’s GDP, by dollar terms, ex-
panded from $1.2 trillion in 2000 to more than $9 trillion in 2013, the country is
poised to seek greater influence, Chen said.
“China has accumulated massive national wealth under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, and now Xi Jinping can turn the wealth into power,” she said.
Rule follower
When the Apec leaders’ forum was
held in Shanghai in 2001, a month after the Septeber 11 terror attacks, Jiang offered support to US President George W. Bush. Jiang said then that China would “strictly follow international market rules” and implement “open, transparent and fair” trade and investment policies.
That stance paid off: China’s export machine ran full steam, expanding eight times from $266.1 billion in 2001 to $2.2 trillion in 2013; foreign-exchange reserves ballooned to almost $4 trillion from $212 billion at the end of 2001, and China received an influx of investment flows that brought new technologies and expertise.
“The Apec meeting in 2001, gave a chance for China to fit into the regional and global trade system,” said Liu Chenyang, director of Apec Study Center in Nankai University in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, who attended the event then. “As the No. 2 economy now, China has to play a more proactive role in defining new goals and paths in regional integration.”
Chinese investment
It’s time for China to focus on outbound investments, according to Xi’s comments made at a leadership meeting to develop land and maritime routes connecting China and Europe, Xinhua reported on Thursday. Outbound investment has swelled from $2.1 billion in 2003, the earliest year of official data, to $75 billion in the first nine months of this year.