... facilitate and 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” ...
... 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. Even this minor opening faced strenuous
US opposition
.
American dominance of the Asia-Pacific region leaves China only two avenues for diplomatic maneuvering on anything like an equal footing. It can look south to the relatively poor countries of Southeast and South Asia or north to resource-rich Russia. While Chinese entrepreneurs ...
