President Xi Jinping will chair the 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, next week, with the high-profile gathering expected to chart the course for stronger Asia-Pacific cooperation at a time of rising global uncertainty.
He is also scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of the APEC CEO Summit 2026 and deliver a keynote speech. On the sidelines of the APEC gathering, he will host a welcoming banquet for participating leaders and representatives, as well as hold bilateral meetings with foreign leaders, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Since taking office as president in 2013, Xi has attended or chaired all APEC economic leaders' meetings, putting forward a series of pragmatic proposals and initiatives.
The upcoming meeting in Shenzhen, which is themed "Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together", marks China's third time hosting APEC, following Shanghai in 2001 and Beijing in 2014.
China has designated openness, innovation and cooperation as the three priorities for APEC China Year, hosting more than 300 related events, including ministerial meetings on trade, finance and energy, over the past year.
More than 10,000 representatives have participated in these events and reached a series of common understandings on cooperation, laying a solid foundation for the high-level gathering in Shenzhen, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Friday at a regular news conference in Beijing.
"We look forward to building further consensus and agreeing on the APEC Shenzhen Leaders' Declaration among all member economies, as well as more practical results in key areas such as trade, connectivity, the digital economy, artificial intelligence and so on, to inject strong impetus into the prosperity and growth of the Asia-Pacific and the world," Mao said.
Founded in 1989, APEC is a premier economic cooperation platform in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing together 21 member economies that account for nearly 40 percent of the global population, around 60 percent of global GDP and nearly half of world trade.
Eduardo Pedrosa, executive director of the APEC Secretariat, said at a media briefing in Singapore earlier this month that APEC brings its 21 economies together "to share experiences, assess different policy approaches and identify areas where further progress is needed".
Australian economist Peter Drysdale said the Asia-Pacific community should be a beacon for the world, adding that projecting common interests through APEC and building on its founding principles are important not only for the region but also for the rest of the world.
APEC is a stabilizing force in the international political economy, Drysdale told Xinhua News Agency in a recent interview.
"It provides a set of principles that are going to be absolutely fundamental to managing the difficulties we have in the world today," he said, noting that it "reduces the uncertainties in the world, creates more certainty".
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that amid the fluid international landscape, the Asia-Pacific has remained a zone of stability, an engine of growth and a high ground for cooperation. At the 37th APEC Ministerial Meeting held earlier this month, he said that the upcoming leaders' meeting is "an important event bearing on the future development of the Asia-Pacific".
The APEC CEO Summit, scheduled to run alongside the leaders' meeting, has attracted strong global interest, with government, business and media participants expected to exceed 2,000, according to the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, organizer of the two-day event.
Business representatives from all 21 APEC economies have registered to participate, with the United States accounting for the largest number of corporate participants among APEC economies other than China. The event has also attracted reputable companies from non-APEC members, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Switzerland.
"This shows that, in an uncertain world, China is the greatest source of certainty," CCPIT spokeswoman Wang Wenshuai said late last month when briefing reporters on preparatory work for the event.
Data from the General Administration of Customs shows that China's trade with other APEC economies reached 27.08 trillion yuan ($4 trillion) in the first 10 months of 2026, up 25.4 percent year-on-year.
