Tai Chi by the Bay

Photo Credit- San Francisco Chronicle

What to Expect at this week's APEC Summit in San Francisco

This week, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit will be held in San Francisco, the world-famous City by the Bay whose reputation has slid due to the substantial presence of drugs, crime, and homelessness in the city.  Since 1989, APEXC has met every November to promote trade and economic cooperation among its members, who together comprise nearly two-thirds of global GDP.  The largest member is the United States, followed by China, along with 19 other countries including Japan, Australia, and Mexico.  While not an official member, the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, has long sent representatives to the event as the self-governing island seeks to avoid international isolation.  This year, Taiwan will be represented by semiconductor giant TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) founder Morris Chang.

While APEC is, in theory, a forum where all member nations can come together to set aside their differences and work toward the reduction of barriers to trade and investment, recent tensions between the two largest members have made the purpose of APEC, once seen as a slam dunk, much more difficult to achieve.  While in 1989 many thought ideological competition to be a thing of the past, China’s Xi Jinping has discarded the pragmatic record of his post-Mao predecessors and has instead sought to create a political, economic, and even military bloc that stands in opposition to the United States and the many current US-dominated international institutions.  Of the members of APEC, only Russia has openly embraced Xi’s vision of “multipolarity” as all the other members of APEC have either definitively sided with the US (such as Japan and Australia) or adopted a neutral position (such as Mexico and the Southeast Asian countries) between the two giants.

With Russian President Vladimir Putin, an accused war criminal under an international arrest warrant, highly unlikely to set foot on American soil ever again, Xi will be the definitive representative of the Anti-US bloc at the summit.  Thus, his meeting with the conference’s host, President Joseph Biden, will be the most discussed event of the proceedings.  Due to the current nadir of bilateral relations between Beijing and Washington caused by a long list of grievances on both sides, the most notable of which being tensions over the status of Taiwan and current American trade sanctions placed on China, there is little expectation of anything concrete that will be accomplished during the Biden-Xi meeting.  Both presidents have a domestic audience to worry about, and serious concessions to the other side, whether over trade or military matters, would be seen as weakness.

The best-case scenario is the resumption of bilateral military contact halted by Beijing following the ill-advised visit of a congressional delegation to Taiwan in the summer of 2022.  Such a resumption would reduce the risk of accidents in disputed waters, usually stemming from coercive displays of Chinese military power meant to scare off the US Navy from territories Xi and his cronies see as indisputable Chinese territory.  Even though serious concessions beyond the most basic crisis management mechanisms are unlikely to be made, the fact that the nations of APEC are meeting at all is still a great accomplishment.  Despite attempts to “de-risk” the relationship, China still has not completely abandoned all cooperation with the United States and its allies in the way that Russia did following its brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.  With a little luck, we can still avoid a major military confrontation in East Asia.  The fate of the world quite literally depends on it.

*Update: Xi and Biden did exactly as I predicted- they restarted the military hotline, but were unable to get past any of the other major grievances each side has with the other.

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