Asia-Pacific free trade ‘critical for prosperity’
Print Edition
CHINA has called for pushing forward the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, as protectionism dents global trade and economic integration.
The FTAAP “is a strategic initiative critical for the long-term prosperity of the Asia-Pacific,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said while delivering a keynote speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in Lima on Saturday.
“We should firmly pursue the FTAAP as an institutional mechanism for ensuring an open economy in the Asia-Pacific,” he told global business leaders.
The FTAAP process was launched at the 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing.
Xi arrived in Peru last Friday to attend the annual APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Peru’s capital Lima, and to pay his first state visit to the Latin American country.
This year’s meeting comes against the backdrop of a sluggish global recovery, lack of growth momentum, backlash against globalization, weak trade and investment, and growing global challenges that cloud economic outlook.
“The Asia-Pacific is under similar pressure and is grappling with such challenges as the fragmentation of regional economic cooperation,” Xi said.
He called on the 21 APEC member economies to promote an open and integrated economy, enhance connectivity to achieve interconnected development, boost reform and innovation to create more internal driving force, and promote win-win cooperation to forge strong partnership.
“For any regional trade arrangement to gain broad support, it must be open, inclusive and beneficial to all,” he said, adding that “closed and exclusive arrangement is not the right choice.”
Xi said that the APEC members must energize trade and investment to drive growth, make free trade arrangements more open and inclusive, and uphold the multilateral trading regime.
Acknowledging that economic globalization was a “double-edged sword” with skepticism these days, the leader of the world’s second largest economy said he nonetheless believed that economic globalization was in keeping with the law of economics and delivered benefits to all.
“We need to actively guide globalization, promote equity and justice, and make globalization more resilient, inclusive and sustainable, so people will get a fair share of its benefits and will see that they have a stake in it,” Xi said.
The president also called for implementing the consensus and outcomes of the 2014 APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Beijing and this year’s G20 summit held in September in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
Xi reassured global business leaders on China’s economic growth and opening-up strategy, saying that the country would carry out supply-side structural reform, accelerate the shifting of growth model, promote innovation-driven development, and replace old growth drivers with new ones.
China would also boost high-standard, two-way opening-up to deliver win-win outcomes, and push for shared and green development to make life better for its people, he said.
“China’s economy has a promising future, and China’s development will present great opportunities to the world,” the president said.
The country’s economy grew 6.7 percent in the third quarter of 2016, holding steady with the first and the second quarters and strengthening hope that the central government will achieve its annual GDP growth target of 6.5 percent to 7 percent.
“We will give greater access to foreign investment and continue to set up high-standard pilot free trade zones in China,” Xi said. “China’s investment climate will be more open, favorable and transparent, thus allowing foreign companies to share in China’s growth opportunities.”
Xi said that in the next five years China will import US$8 trillion of goods, introduce US$600 billion of foreign investment and invest US$750 billion overseas, and Chinese tourists would make more than 700 million outbound visits.
“All this means a bigger market, more capital, a greater variety of products and more valuable cooperation opportunities for countries around the world,” Xi said.
Founded in 1989, APEC now accounts for 60 percent of the global economy.
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