US and China will vie to shape regional order at Apec summit

THE 21 leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) nations meet on Nov 10-11 for a landmark summit in Beijing. The meeting comes some 25 years after the founding of the organisation in 1989 during a period of rapid global change around the end of the Cold War.

A quarter of a century on, a key debate is underway within the Pacific Rim nations around future regional economic integration. China, for instance, has an ambitious agenda for the summit, including a long-term proposal to create an Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area (also known as the Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific or FTAAP).

Beijing's push for this provides an alternative model for enhanced economic integration to that of the United States. Some 25 years after Washington helped create Apec, US President Barack Obama is now championing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which could see a deal in 2015 with around a dozen countries initially (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam) in the Americas and Asia-Pacific that collectively account for about 40 per cent of world GDP.