On November 15, the 30th APEC Ministerial Meeting was held in Papua New Guinea. The meeting had discussions on issues including regional economic integration, economic and trade connection, multilateral trading system and inclusive growth. Assistant Minister of Commerce Ren Hongbin attended the meeting on behalf of Minister Zhong Shan.
Ren Hongbin said that, at present, multilateral trading system is facing challenges, and APEC should continue to support multilateral trading system, oppose unilateralism and protectionism, and provide rule basis and mechanism guarantee to the regional prosperity and development. China supports the necessary reforms of WTO in principle, so as to strengthen its authority and effectiveness.
Ren Hongbin emphasized that, APEC should continue to take Asia-Pacific FTA as the development goal, promote the related work in the fields of consensus, gather active factors for the final realization of Asia-Pacific FTA, and make it the important part of the cooperation vision of APEC after 2020. APEC should continue to build an all-around, multilevel and compound Asian-Pacific connectivity network, and China welcomes the new working outline of Asia-pacific Demonstration E-port Network and the forthcoming database of trade value added of global value chain. At the same time, APEC should promote cooperation in internet and digital economy, and enhance the level of medium sized, small sized and micro-sized enterprises participating in the global value chain, so as to promote the sustainable, innovative and inclusive growth of this region.
Ren Hongbin pointed out that about 2000 enterprises from all the 21 members of APEC attended the first China International import Expo, with the intended transaction value taking up almost half of all the intended transaction value of the import expo. China welcomes APEC economies to continue to take part in China International import Expo actively next year.
