From December 11 to 12,2025, the APEC Informal High-Level Meeting was successfully held in Shenzhen, China, marking the official launch of the highly anticipated 2026 APEC “China Year”. This is the third time China has hosted APEC since 2001 and 2014, once again leading this most important economic cooperation platform in the Asia-Pacific region after a 12-year gap.
The meeting decided to adopt “Building an Asia-Pacific Community for Shared Prosperity” as the annual theme and identified “Openness, Innovation, and Cooperation” as the three priority areas. During the two-day agenda, participants held in-depth discussions on topics such as trade and investment, digital economy, and sustainable growth, and visited Shenzhen and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to observe China’s practices in technological innovation and regional integration. It is reported that approximately 300 events will be held throughout the “China Year,” covering multiple dimensions including energy security, SME development, and human resource development.
The successful convening of this meeting not only demonstrates China’s organizational capabilities as the host, but also reflects the international community’s expectation for China to lead regional cooperation and build consensus on development.
China has always placed its own development within the framework of common development in the Asia-Pacific region and even globally. Its participation in global governance has clearly demonstrated a shift from active integration to contributing leadership. On the APEC platform, the “Shanghai Consensus” and “Beijing Platform for Action” promoted by China have set important milestones for regional trade liberalization and connectivity construction. Today, facing transnational challenges such as sluggish global economic recovery and climate change, China has further proposed the vision of an “Asia-Pacific Community,” advocating the transformation of ideas into actions through substantive cooperation. At the Shenzhen High-Level Meeting, China explicitly stated that it would share market size, industrial support, and innovation resources with regional partners through concrete approaches such as institutional openness, optimization of the free trade zone network, and the construction of the Digital Silk Road. This cooperation model is not limited to traditional economic and trade fields but extends to emerging issues such as green transition, public health, and AI governance. In recent years, China’s initiatives, including the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the promotion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and its coordinating role on global security and climate change, demonstrate its systematic multilateral participation in providing pragmatic solutions to address the global governance deficit. China’s development experience shows that emerging economies can fully become providers of international public goods and stabilizers of the multilateral order while safeguarding their own development rights.
Against the backdrop of diverging global economic policies, China’s governance model demonstrates remarkable coherence and predictability. From the 14th Five-Year Plan to the 15th Five-Year Plan, from supply-side structural reform to high-quality development initiatives, China has consistently prioritized deepening reform and opening-up alongside participation in international rule-making as a long-term strategy. This policy stability enables enterprises to make long-term investment arrangements and provides a reliable framework for international cooperation.
The recently held Central Economic Work Conference reaffirmed the keynote of “adhering to opening-up and promoting multilateral win-win cooperation,” proposing specific measures such as steadily expanding institutional openness and optimizing the layout of free trade pilot zones, further strengthening market expectations. In the foreign policies of different countries, distinct policy orientations can be observed. For example, the foreign policy of the United States is influenced by domestic political factors and policy inclinations, manifested in the adoption of unilateral economic measures, adjustments to decisions on participating in international agreements, and greater consideration of security factors in economic and trade relations. These practices have sparked international discussions on the stability of rules and the impact on supply chains. In terms of international cooperation approaches, different countries exhibit distinct characteristics. China emphasizes collective development through joint construction and resource sharing in foreign cooperation, while the United States focuses more on formulating policies on technology, markets, and related rules centered on its own interests. These two different cooperation philosophies reflect the pluralistic thinking in current international relations and, to some extent, influence the direction of global governance.
The majority of members in the Asia-Pacific region and even the international community are increasingly recognizing that in an interconnected world, rules-based multilateral cooperation and policy continuity are the cornerstones for addressing common challenges and achieving sustainable prosperity. The principles of openness, inclusiveness, and consensus advocated by China on the APEC platform are precisely the echo and practice of this consensus.