Family photo of the heads of state and government at the APEC summit. YONHAP (EFE)
Just a day after revitalizing their bilateral relations at the summit of their presidents on the outskirts of San Francisco, the United States and China immediately launched this Thursday to compete in their promotion of the Asian and Latin American countries taking part this year the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
US President Joe Biden, host of the summit, began the day with a speech to the forum’s economic summit to promote his country’s role as an investor in the Asia-Pacific region and portray it as a more desirable trading partner than China. “We will not stop being present in the region,” he promised less than 24 hours after meeting President Xi Jinping at the Filoli Villa. Although he stressed that his country is not seeking economic “decoupling” from China but merely wants to “reduce risks and diversify its options,” he stressed that “we have real differences with Beijing when it comes to fair and impartial on the ground.” to maintain the conditions of commercial gambling and to protect your intellectual property.”
Biden recalled that American companies have invested almost $50 billion in APEC economies so far this year, such as in aviation and clean energy.
Hours later, the White House tenant met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Seuk-yol at the end of Thursday’s official working sessions without making any statements to the press. According to the US Presidential Office, he spoke to the Japanese about humanitarian aid in Gaza and the war in Ukraine. Biden had already held a trilateral summit in August to strengthen relations with his two major allies against China in the northern Asia-Pacific region. This Friday he plans to meet with Mexican leader Manuel Andrés López Obrador and will welcome Peruvian leader Dina Boluarte, handing her over as acting APEC president.
For his part, Chinese leader Xi Jinping turned his attention to Latin America, especially to those countries that regret that the region has disappeared from the radar of the attention of the United States, which is now focused on the Asia-Pacific Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas. In his first activities on Thursday before attending the summit, Xi first met with López Obrador and immediately afterward with Boluarte.
At their meeting, Xi pledged his support for Peru to host the next APEC summit and stressed that the two countries need to strengthen their economic and trade ties by purchasing more agricultural products, according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. of the Andean country and greater participation of Chinese companies in Peruvian projects.
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Previously, at his first meeting with the Mexican leader, the Chinese president promised to take bilateral relations to a new level. Both agreed to deepen their cooperation in the fight against fentanyl trafficking and take measures to reduce the flow of precursors from the Asian country to Mexico, where the cartels produce the opioid and ship it to the United States. Exactly this kind of measure to combat a scourge that kills nearly 100,000 people in the United States every year was one of the key agreements reached on Wednesday during the meeting that Xi and Biden held at the luxurious Filoli villa, 40 kilometers away away, held in San Francisco. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, both leaders also discussed their countries’ cooperation in the areas of infrastructure, finance and electric vehicles.
In addition, Xi also met late Thursday evening with the Japanese prime minister, the leader of another country – besides the United States – with which Beijing has had more than tense relations over the last decade and with which it is seeking calm. Ties. Both leaders had not met in person over the past year, during which bilateral ties were weakened by events such as China’s ban on Japanese fish after Tokyo began discharging treated water from its Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea in August. The Japanese government also denounces the presence of Chinese patrols near the East China Sea islands disputed by both countries, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Mandarin.
Xi, who traveled to the meeting with a weakened economy, sought to expand trade ties and investment with Japan, his neighbor and the world’s third-largest economy. Kishida, for his part, sought the lifting of China’s fishing ban and the release of Japanese citizens imprisoned in the People’s Republic on espionage charges. “Japan and China coexist and prosper as neighbors and share the responsibility to contribute to world peace and stability,” the Japanese prime minister emphasized at the start of their meeting.
The Chinese president will also devote his final day in San Francisco to discussing a delicate bilateral relationship: the one he has with the Philippines, with which Beijing disputes sovereignty over part of the waters of the South China Sea. Manila said Chinese patrols in recent weeks have harassed resupply operations by its Marines stationed on the Second Thomas sandbar, part of the Spratly Islands where the Philippines is storing a wrecked military ship to bolster its claim to control of the area.
“We will seek opinions from the Chinese President on what we can do to lower the temperature and not escalate the situation in the West Philippine Sea,” said President Ferdinand Marcos this Thursday in San Francisco. Marcos, who has been pushing for closer military ties with Washington since coming to power in June last year, met with US Vice President Kamala Harris this Thursday.
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