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China to host APEC officials session Feb 11-19
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum 2001 host China will hold the first APEC meeting this month amid concerns about the US economy and disputes about the pace of trade liberalisation, China Daily quoted a Chinese official on Friday.
The February 11-19 gathering in Beijing of more than 500 senior officials from the 21-member economic grouping sets the stage for a series of meetings in China culminating in an informal summit of APEC leaders in Shanghai in October.
Chinese Foreign Ministry official Wu Hailong told reporters APEC economies were concerned "about whether the US economy can achieve a soft landing and about problems in the development of the new economy".
But Wu said that despite concerns about the slowing economy in the region's biggest export market, "the economic situation in the Asia-Pacific area is, on the whole, stable and the possibility of a crisis is low".
He said China expected APEC would give impetus to the launch of a new round of trade talks under the World Trade Organisation, but that the 12-year-old APEC faced a schism over its priorities and over the pace of trade and investment liberalisation.
"Some members are stressing trade and investment liberalisation and want to make it the priority area," Wu said.
Those members wanted to achieve the goals set out in Bogor in Indonesia in 1994, when APEC declared itself committed to the goal of free and open markets within its developed members by 2010 and in developing economies by 2020, he said.
"Others disagree, saying that when the targets were set in 1994, Asian economies had not yet experienced the Asian financial crisis, and this must be taken into consideration," he said.
The United States, Australia and other APEC advocates of freer trade say the removal of tariffs, barriers to business and restrictions on the movement of goods and on the provision of services will bring prosperity to all.
But Malaysia and other developing economies in APEC want a slower pace of liberalisation and say efforts to boost technological training and narrow the so-called digital divide between the hi-tech haves and have-nots should take precedence.
APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.
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