APEC CEO Summit Sets New Record: Yu XiaosongYu Xiaosong, chairman of the Organizing Committee of the APEC CEO Summit, said here Friday that for the first time in its history, the CEO Summit has had nine leaders from the member economies to deliver speeches.Yu, also chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said at a press conference that Mexican President Vicente Fox, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, U.S. President George W. Bush and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will address the gathering of business elites from members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) on Saturday. Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Russian President Vladimir Putin already gave a speech at the summit on Thursday and Friday. The leaders' speeches touched on wide-ranging topics such as globalization, regional development, the significance of APEC to the business world, and the prospects of the New Economy. As an important part of the APEC meetings, the CEO Summit has drawn nearly 600 business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region. So far, Yu said, the agenda of the summit has largely been completed. Yu expressed the hope that the participants will continue their extensive and in-depth discussions centering around the theme of New Century, New Economy: Developing in the Globalizing World, and reach a general and clear-cut consensus on facing up to the New Economy, embracing the new challenges of economic globalization, participating actively and extensively in the overall cooperation to promote economic prosperity and sustained development in this region and the world as a whole. |
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