China faces hurdles on path to Asia-Pacific free-trade deal

China is seeking to leverage its status as host of the Apec summit to advance talks on an Asia-Pacific free-trade deal and a joint push against corruption, but work on other agreements is standing in the way.

China's latest call is for a feasibility study on the FTAAP idea. It is analysis that usually precedes formal negotiations.

"We have not yet agreed on the study," Bollard said. "China is proposing that we do some more work on free-trade area of the Asia-Pacific region … But we are not at all clear about what it means and we would like to learn some more details about what it means and how we get there."

There are already several trade deals under negotiation in the region, the major one being the US-dominated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) covering 12 Pacific Rim countries but not China.

Beijing is also looking to wrap up talks on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which would draw in the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

Some Apec economies have said that the regional talks already in progress should take priority over new negotiations. There is also no clear sign that any of these trade deals are close to being finalised.

"None of the economies want to start negotiating on the FTAAP. It is far too early to do that," Bollard said. "Especially for smaller economies, they find it very difficult to advance bilateral trade negotiations and regional ones, and the big plurilateral one as well."

He said the parties had to sort out issues involving trade options, and if there was a need for alternatives to the TPP.

Apec leaders are due in Beijing next month in what will be the second time China has hosted the event. The first was in Shanghai in 2001.

The Shanghai summit was dominated by a counterterrorism agenda in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States, but the focus of next month's meeting will be on initiatives to spur slowing regional trade growth.

Bollard said China had proposed workshops on environmental technology to drive economic growth, and had called for more infrastructure financing in the region.

The other major agenda item for China is to bolster the joint fight against corruption within Apec. Beijing is waging a massive anti-graft campaign which over the past two years netted several top officials for "disciplinary violations", including the nation's former security tsar Zhou Yongkang and former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission Xu Caihou .

But Beijing is also keen to catch up with the families and aides of officials, or top brass at state-owned enterprises, who have fled overseas with ill-gotten assets, and is looking to Apec for help. In August, Apec members launched a network to share information about investigation techniques and anti-graft strategies, a system that Beijing hopes will stop corrupt fugitives.

China and the US were keen to team up in the corruption fight, Bollard said, adding that the network had moved cooperation forward.

But he said cooperation might be limited because each country had its own laws on what information could be shared.