So who cares about Apec? The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum is an incongruous mix of rich and poor nations accounting for 45 per cent of the world's population but lacking formal power to make and enforce decisions.
As such, last weekend's finance officials meeting in Suzhou was always going to produce only vague aspirations and much jaw boning.
The fast-worsening global economic crunch concentrated ministers' minds and the good news is a continuing commitment to open trade and multilateral solutions.
This matters because the alternative is protectionism and begger-thy-neighbour currency devaluations. Any lurch in this direction would derail economic recovery and destabilise regional relations.
Should the global economic climate worsen markedly, then Asia's mercantilist tendencies could easily gather pace if there were no trust among national leaders.
If that happened, then the first to be hurt would be the poor. Contrary to what anti-globalisation protesters would have the world believe, US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was right in saying that 'free trade is the friend of the lowest-income people of the world'.
