Practical approaches, tangible outcomes

As this year's APEC host, China has outlined a clear pathway for advancing the building of Asia-Pacific community for shared prosperity

The 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting will be held in Shenzhen on Nov 18 and 19. This is China's third time hosting an APEC meeting, following Shanghai in 2001 and Beijing in 2014. The preparation for and hosting of the Shenzhen Meeting demonstrate that China is working closely and effectively with its fellow members to inject fresh momentum into Asia-Pacific economic cooperation and upgrade it to a new height.

Since joining APEC in 1991, China has evolved from an active participant to an agenda-setter and now to a front-runner. Under the theme of this year's APEC Shenzhen Meeting — Building the Asia-Pacific Community for Shared Prosperity — China is turning the vision of an Asia-Pacific community from a blueprint into concrete action.

The 1994 Bogor Goals set a timeline for APEC's industrialized and developing members to achieve trade and investment liberalization by 2010 and 2020, respectively. Although these goals were not fully realized, they established a cooperation paradigm centered on capacity-building, policy dialogue and economic and technical cooperation.

In 2020, APEC adopted the Putrajaya Vision 2040, which set the long-term strategic goal of building an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific community by 2040. In 2021, the Aotearoa Plan of Action provided a concrete implementation framework for the Putrajaya Vision 2040, stipulating that APEC would conduct collective reviews of progress every five years — in 2026, 2031 and 2036. The APEC Shenzhen Meeting, therefore, does not merely focus on advancing current cooperation projects, but also bears the institutional responsibility of conducting the first midterm review, recalibrating APEC's cooperation direction for the next decade.

In terms of agenda-setting, China's vision for the Asia-Pacific community is being translated into a concrete list of deliverables. Looking ahead, cooperation is organized around three priorities: openness, innovation and cooperation. At the project level, China is anchoring its commitments through specific cooperative projects. Institutionally, it advocates a shift from "negotiating outcomes" to "verifying outcomes".

The APEC Shenzhen Meeting is not only a major international multilateral gathering but also a key home-ground platform for China to showcase the institutional achievements of its high-quality development and to propel regional cooperation from consensus to action in the first year of China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30). At the same time, the "mutually reinforcing" relationship between the meeting and China's high-quality development exhibits a threefold structural complexity.

First, the APEC Shenzhen Meeting provides a stress test and a platform for aligning rules of institutional opening-up for the country. The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the 15th Five-Year Plan explicitly call for steadily expanding institutional opening-up in terms of rules, regulations, management and standards. As APEC is the broadest and longest-standing economic cooperation mechanism in the Asia-Pacific, its discussions on digital trade, green standards and supply chain connectivity are precisely the frontier of international rules, with which China's institutional opening-up needs to proactively align. As the APEC host, China is able to achieve a two-way calibration between domestic reforms and evolving international rules at the regulatory level.

Second, the platform amplifies the visibility and demonstration effect of China's high-quality development model. APEC has long grappled with the problem of "more declarations than actions". By placing practices associated with its 15th Five-Year Plan — such as the development of new quality productive forces, the modernization of the industrial system and the continuous increase in R&D intensity — under the spotlight of the Putrajaya Vision's midterm review, China can offer other APEC members a clearer picture of its approach to high-quality development, from strategic design and quantitative targets to phased results.

Third, the APEC Shenzhen Meeting facilitates the integration of national strategies and regional cooperation agendas, creating a demonstration effect. The preparation for and hosting of the APEC Shenzhen Meeting are advancing, directly or indirectly, domestic reform and opening-up in areas such as climate change and green development, as well as digital connectivity.

Asia-Pacific cooperation has never been a linear or smooth process. As one of the founding members and the largest economy of APEC, the United States has exerted severe structural shocks on the regional cooperation order with its policy swings and the logic of "America First". Tariff wars, industrial reshoring and repeated reversals in multilateral commitments have put APEC's internal cohesion and the principle of open regionalism to a stern test. Yet historical experience shows that the resilience of the Asia-Pacific region derives precisely from the shared interests of its diverse members. The positive expectations of most APEC members regarding the APEC Shenzhen Meeting, the strong calls from the business community for open markets and stable supply chains, and the renewed recognition among academics of the buffering function of multilateral frameworks — all indicate that the general trend of regional integration has not been reversed by unilateralism.

The world and the region face major challenges such as interference from geopolitical factors and the excessive securitization of development issues. Nevertheless, most members, including China, have kept APEC firmly focused on the main thread of economic development and integrating cutting-edge technological advances into high-quality economic growth. In doing so, the Asia-Pacific's economic development remains an important driver of global growth in the digital and intelligent era.

Looking ahead, the APEC Shenzhen Meeting is poised to become a landmark step toward building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future. By combining grand vision with pragmatic efforts, it will contribute to the broader endeavor of building a community with a shared future for humanity — offering direction, pathways and implementation for this vital region — thereby fostering a virtuous cycle among economic, technological and social progress toward a better world in the years and decades ahead.

The author is a senior fellow and the chairman of the Academic Advisory Council at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.