Xi to attend G20, Asia Pacific summits this month
November 9, 2015, 6:30 am

Xi Jinping during a state visit to the UK last month [Xinhua]

Xi will meet world leaders in Antalya, Turkey for the Group of Twenty summit from Nov. 14 to 16 at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in Beijing.

The leader of the world’s second-biggest economy will later head to Manila, capital of Philippine to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting from Nov. 17 to 19 at the invitation of Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, Lu said.

Xi is expected to stress on his commitment to Asia-Pacific allies, even as Beijing tries to counter US efforts to strengthen strategic ties with the region with a much-hyped Asia Pivot.

The two-day G20 summit will focus on promoting economic growth.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in September he had asked G20 member states to prepare investment strategies to secure robust, balanced and sustainable global growth.

The G20 agreed in Brisbane, Australia, last year to launch measures to raise their collective gross domestic product growth and create millions of new jobs over the next five years.

Turkey has said the implementation of the Brisbane Action Plan is critical to the credibility of the G20.

But the global growth outlook has been downgraded since the adoption of the Brisbane plan, making the goals harder to reach.

Meanwhile, at the APEC Summit that follows the G20, leaders will take stock of the mammoth China-backed Asia Pacific FTA negotiations launched during last year’s summit in Beijing.

The Beijing-backed roadmap for this ambitious FTA would be studied over the next year.

The FTA, if implemented, will add an estimated $2.4 trillion to the global economy, says a survey by Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC).

The survey also said the US-led TPP trade pact, when completed, will add about $223 billion and the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) about $644 billion.

“Although APEC is not a platform for trade negotiation, it clearly has an increasingly important role to play in facilitating the preparatory work and efforts towards materializing an FTAAP,” said Don Campbell, co-chair of PECC.

Beijing is trying to counter US’ progress in forming the Trans-Pacific Partnership that excludes China by this alternate mega Free Trade Agreement in the Asia Pacific.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow will also support China’s push for a roadmap on the Asia Pacific FTA.

“Obviously, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is just another U.S. attempt to build an architecture of regional economic cooperation that the USA would benefit from. At the same time, I believe that the absence of two major regional players such as Russia and China in its composition will not promote the establishment of effective trade and economic cooperation,” Putin said last year.

“The multilateral system of economic relations in the APR can only be strong if the interests of all states of the region are taken into account. This approach is reflected in the draft of the Beijing road map for the establishment of an Asia-Pacific free trade area. The draft is to be discussed at the forthcoming meeting of APEC leaders,” he added.

A Wall Street Journal report earlier last year said the US was trying to block China’s efforts at introducing the Asia Pacific FTA negotiations.

Beijing is claiming that this mega Asia Pacific FTA, proposed as early as 2006, is “not in conflict” with the TPP or the RCEP as both are “possible routes to it” and will aim to lower trade barriers across the region.

The China-led RCEP is a 16-nation trade bloc which includes the ASEAN plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

China and India are not included in the US-led TPP trade pact.

The leaders of the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) will meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey.

TBP