China has always attached great importance to the role of APEC and made its own positive contributions to the development of the organization with its active participation. This year China has attended more than 10 APEC ministerial conferences and about 100 other meetings and activities of the organization. It also hosted more than 20 APEC related meetings, seminars and training workshops.

At present, the international financial crisis has not yet been resolved. Some countries are still mired in sovereign debt problems. The employment situation is not very optimistic while food security issues are becoming more prominent. International trade growth is falling noticeably while the difficulty of macroeconomic policy coordination in most countries is on the rise. In the meantime, protectionism is sprouting up and the downside risks of the global economy are increasing.

Under the circumstances, APEC members have agreed that boosting growth, promoting stability and pursuing development should still be the primary tasks of countries in the region. All parties should cherish and further strengthen the hard-won growth of the world economy and promote regional cooperation trying to drive the Asia-Pacific economy to achieve robust, sustainable and balanced growth.

Positive significance

Most APEC members claim that the region should stick to the Bogor Goals put forward in 1994, which require developed APEC members and developing members to achieve trade and investment liberalization in 2010 and 2020 respectively. As the multilateral trading system is faced with severe challenges, APEC members should revive the Bogor Goals, advance the trade and investment liberalization process centering on those objectives and inject impetus to economic recovery and sustainable development.

The world economy may remain in the doldrums for an extended period of time. Protectionism has intensified in some of the APEC member economies, causing problems for their trade partners. APEC should continue to take a firm stand against all kinds of trade protectionism, safeguard a free and fair world trade system and play a more active role in world trade development.

During the Vladivostok meeting, Chinese President Hu Jintao announced that China will host the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in 2014. In 2001, China hosted the Ninth APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Shanghai, which made great progress in promoting the development of a multilateral trading system, human resources capacity building and cooperation in antiterrorism. It also came to a Shanghai consensus aiming to ramp up efforts to achieve the Bogor Goals. China's hosting of the 2014 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting will once again highlight its willingness to promote regional cooperation.

After 20 years of development, APEC members are faced with both opportunities and challenges. While member economies have witnessed steady economic growth with great development potential on account of gradually opening markets, unbalanced economic growth among member economies has hindered the development of the organization as a whole. Therefore, we need to exploit new approaches to further promoting regional economic cooperation within the framework of APEC.

As the world's second largest economy and a representative of emerging economies, China will continue to provide good opportunities for the development of the Asia-Pacific region with its own economic growth. China hopes fellow members will continue to participate in its reform, opening up and modernization drive. China will take the 2014 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting as an opportunity to promote mutually beneficial collaboration in the region, aiming to push Asia-Pacific economic cooperation to a new height.

The author is chairman of the China National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation

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