Interview: APEC architect calls for holding firm to foundational principles

CANBERRA, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- The challenge for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 2024, at a time of retreat from multilateral principles and pressures to fragment the global economy, is to hold firm to APEC's foundational principles and push back against trends that would undermine the potential for development and prosperity in the region, a scholar said on Sunday.

Peter Drysdale, emeritus professor of economics and the head of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research and East Asia Forum at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, told Xinhua that APEC is a crucial platform on which China can demonstrate its commitment to multilateral principles and ongoing reform and openness.

He also believes that APEC is "also an arrangement in which China's dealings with the United States are constructively mediated in a multilateral setting."

"The APEC vision of regional integration and for Free Trade Area of Asia and the Pacific (FTAAP) and the transition to a sustainable carbon neutral future are agendas consistent with China's own ambitions for the future, and APEC is thus an immensely valuable forum for their discussion with regional partners," Drysdale said.

Importantly, the continuing priority attached to the long-term vision of an eventual FTAAP keeps integration across the whole region at the forefront despite the forces that would encourage regional bifurcation, said Drysdale, who is widely recognized as the leading intellectual architect of APEC.

To achieve the national goals for development and decarbonization over the coming few decades, Australia and China will have to effect a wholesale transformation of their trade and industrial economies, not bilaterally but within the regional and global economies, he said.

The resource and energy trade and major industries like the iron and steel industry will have to change fundamentally, Drysdale said, adding that vehicles like APEC should be used to work these issues through together with APEC neighbors in the region.

Under the overarching theme of "Empower. Include. Grow," the 2024 APEC meeting will be held in Peru from Nov. 10 to Nov. 16.

As APEC is founded on multilateral principles and open regionalism, Peru, as this year's chair, has maintained the focus on strategies and pathways towards integration of the whole Asia-Pacific region, in its trade and investment for interconnected growth, innovation and digitalization for inclusive growth, and its sustainable growth for resilient development agendas, he said.