U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2009)

U.S. Department of State

Preview of the November APEC Meetings in Singapore

Kurt Tong
Senior Official for APEC, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Foreign Press Center
Washington, DC
November 3, 2009

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

QUESTION: Thank you. John Zang with CTI-TV of Taiwan. Will there be opportunities for bilateral talks on bilateral trade issues? I'm asking this because the United States and Taiwan have recently signed a beef import agreement, which has generated a lot of controversy in Taiwan. Will there be opportunities for the two sides to revisit the issue during -- on the sidelines of the APEC? Thank you.

MR. TONG: Well, on that specific issue, I don't know whether the right personalities, the right officials will be in Singapore or not to discuss that specific issue. Generally every time that I participate in APEC meetings as a senior official, I always meet with my counterparts from Chinese -- Taipei. And we review the entire range of issues related to APEC. And so there will probably be opportunities for the U.S. to meet with a number of economies bilaterally in Singapore and have a chance for discussions. That takes place sometimes in a formal setting, sometimes an informal setting. Sometimes you're walking down the hall and a counterpart from some economy comes up and says, hey, what about this. So there's lots of opportunities for people to bounce ideas off each other.

MODERATOR: Thank you. This gentleman.

QUESTION: Thank you. Donghui Yu with China Press. You are talking about a leadership that the United States and Japan will play in the next couple of years to define the evolutions of APEC. But in G-20 summit, I know many people actually are talking about the United States and China, that is, even the concepts of G-2. So I just wonder what do you think that -- what role China will play in the process of the APEC evolution. Thank you.

MR. TONG: Well, think China has an extremely important role in APEC. As a very large economy, certainly the most populous economy in APEC -- it's also depending upon your method of calculation -- the third-largest economy in APEC and in the world. The -- and it's -- it gets a very good -- because of that, people are obviously very interested in working with China bilaterally in expanding their trade and investment relations with China. It also -- but China's pure size as well as the high caliber of its officials who participate in APEC, give it quite a voice within the discussions, and so we -- I personally consider China to be a real leader within APEC and absolutely embrace that. It's one of the real valuable aspects. As I said at the beginning, one of the real valuable aspects of APEC is the importance and the significance of the economies that are -- that participate in the organization, and China is certainly one of the leading members.

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

QUESTION: Hi. Xiong Min from 21st Century Business Herald China. It seems that the U.S. wants to also among all the -- aside from all the agenda you just mentioned, U.S. also helps to use the Singapore APEC as a platform to prepare yourself for the 2011 APEC in the U.S. I wonder if you can elaborate more about what you're going to do on this occasion in Singapore to prepare for that.

MR. TONG: Well, I think that thematically the themes which I outlined to you at the start are ones that I believe that we'll pursue through Japan's leadership in 2010 and the U.S. leadership in 2011. And our goal in this effort that we -- we've actually for some time been doing coordination among Singapore, Japan, and the United States, thinking about, a sort of, three-year progression and how we can achieve good outcomes in areas that are important to APEC. And I think we're on track to do so. It requires a lot of coordination and a lot of discussion to achieve that.

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

QUESTION: What is it about (inaudible) to create East Asian economic community? Could you comment on that?

MR. TONG: I'd like to say that the -- it's an interesting idea and address it kind of at the level of general principle. The United States understands that there are good reasons for the Asia Pacific -- East Asian economies and governments to associate with one another in a number of different ways, so there's the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, there's the ASEAN Plus Three, there's the ASEAN Plus Six, which is sort of an economic approach. There's the East Asia Summit. There's the Plus Three Group. Recently there was a meeting amongst Japan, China, and the Republic of Korea in sort of plus-three format. And so there's a lot of different groupings. And similarly, the United States participates in a lot of organizations with our own hemisphere or with Europe.

But the -- I think the point to take home is that transpacific organizations like APEC are crucially important. They add to the prosperity of the region. They result in higher-level outcomes in specific economic policy work, and by nature, they tend to stabilize the Asia Pacific region in extremely valuable ways.

MODERATOR: Okay.

QUESTION: Hi. Sandra Sun from China Business News. Will climate change and clean energy in Copenhagen -- will it be on the U.S. Government agenda?

MR. TONG: Climate change is always on our agenda. It's a critical challenge. The approach that's being taken within APEC to address climate change is largely one of capacity building and, again, peer pressure. Peer pressure is not the right word -- peer encouragement -- (laughter) -- to do a -- to take on and do a good job in trying to mitigate the effects of climate change.

So one of the things -- just to give you a practical example, within APEC there's something called the peer review mechanism for energy efficiency, and economies can volunteer to participate in this and have the other economies of the region sort of look at their policies on energy efficiency and suggest changes, or suggest improvements to those. That's a very practical way that APEC can contribute. There's also within the energy working group within APEC there are a number of very specific projects in the capacity building area to help economies learn more about efficient transportation technology, it even gets -- it gets down to the very specific level -- like what -- how should we make sure that people are producing the most energy efficient refrigerators. I mean, it gets quite specific in the various working groups within APEC, and that capacity building work is really quite valuable to the economies.

MODERATOR: One last question. No? If not, then thank you very much.

MR. TONG: Great. Thank you all.

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