Asia-Pacific free trade area: The road to better economic integration in the region
Zhang Jun says while work on the proposed Asia-Pacific free trade area is advancing, all economies involved would also do well to focus on finding synergy among the existing agreements
The Apec Economic Leaders’ Meeting will be held in Manila on Wednesday and Thursday. The proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, which will serve as an important pathway for regional economic integration, is bound to be a hot topic at the meeting.
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Twenty-one years ago in Bogor, Indonesia, Apec leaders put forward the Bogor Goals that aimed to liberalise trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific’s industrialised economies by 2010, and by 2020 for developing economies. Since then, Apec has witnessed a new era in advancing economic cooperation.
Apec economies have endeavoured, through joint efforts, to pursue free and open trade and investment, and promote mutual prosperity and stability in the region, turning it into an engine of global economic growth.
Apec economies have made substantial progress in the past year in working towards the free trade area, especially in the collective strategic study
Over the past 21 years, Apec economies have remained committed to achieving the Bogor Goals, as well as to regional cooperation. However, alongside progress, new problems and challenges have also emerged. Given the “spaghetti bowl effect” of the various overlapping regional trade arrangements, there is a risk of fragmentation.
Faced with such challenges, Apec economies have begun to explore a high-level free trade arrangement encompassing all members, and that was how the proposal for an Asia-Pacific free trade area came into being.
With the joint efforts of all economies involved, work on the free trade area has been progressing steadily: in 2006, Apec leaders agreed to make it a long-term vision; in 2010, all economies reached a consensus on speeding up the regional economic integration process, and exploring the possible pathways to a free trade area; in 2014, leaders decided to launch and promote the process by endorsing the Beijing road map towards realising the free trade area.
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