... liberalise trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region.
For Russia, APEC is in fact the only platform in which the country participates in integration processes within the Asia-Pacific region through forming the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The aims of the FTAAP were outlined back in 2006, and yet the process only gained real momentum in 2014, when China took over APEC chairmanship. China and the United States, two key regional economies, initiated and led a “strategic study” ...
... with the WTO, the idea is to make membership in the TPP indispensable and only then to invite China and Russia to join.
China is using its economic leverage to promote an alternative to the TPP that it calls the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). It has had little success. As the host of the November 2014 APEC summit, China was able to push through an agreement to conduct a
two-year study
of the potential for an FTAAP, in effect delaying any formal negotiations until 2017 at the earliest....
A choice between American TPP and Chinese FTAAP
2014 APEC Summit revealed strategic aspirations of all major regional players. Countries push and bid on different initiatives of regional free trade integration, thus creating a massive stumbling block – a choice between American TPP and ...
