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China ready for APEC growth role
By Willy Wo-Lap Lam, CNN Senior China Analyst
(CNN) -- President Hu Jintao will carry a special message to the APEC leaders meeting in Bangkok next week: China is ready to be a locomotive of growth and a force for stability in the Asia-Pacific region. The 60-year-old leader is expected to announce a series of initiatives, including more imports from China's trading partners as well as a further opening of the China market to overseas investors. Hu and the other leaders from the 21 APEC economics will meet in an informal summit on Monday-Tuesday, October 20-21, after a series of preliminary discussions involving officials and other ministers in Bangkok this week. The timing of the APEC summit could not have been better for Beijing. The on-going Communist Party Central Committee plenum has endorsed a market reform document aimed at curtailing government interference and boosting the role of the private sector. And earlier this month, Hu's main political ally, Premier Wen Jiabao, indicated at the annual ASEAN conference in Bali, Indonesia that "a more developed and stronger China will bring about developmental opportunities and tangible benefits to other Asian countries". At Bali, Wen signed a historic partnership agreement -- the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation -- with ASEAN, and injected new impetus to the China-Asian Free Trade Area arrangement. President Hu is expected to continue the charm offensive at the larger global forum provided by APEC. Beijing analysts say the Chinese leadership is using its economic clout to expand its global influence while reassuring Asia and the West that China's rise would accelerate growth and be good for international business. "China is waging a more assertive economic diplomacy within global forums such as APEC," said Professor Shi Yanhong, an international affairs expert at Beijing's People's University. At Bangkok, Hu will do his best to allay suspicions that China is exploiting the undervalued yuan to pursue an unfair trading advantage. The president is expected to maintain the line that a stable yuan is in the interest of China's Asian neighbors and trading partners. However, to address criticism about China's bulging trade surplus, Hu and his aides will likely announce more concrete measures to increase the country's imports from APEC nations. Earlier this month, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said the country would be importing goods and services worth $1 trillion over the next three years or so. And Premier Wen said last Friday that the central government would be slashing tax rebates -- an indirect form of state subsidy -- to China#s exporters. On the bilateral front, the highlight of Hu# stay in Thailand would be a #mini-summit# with President George W. Bush on APEC#s fringes. Given that China#s $100 billion-odd trade surplus with the U.S. has become a hot-button election-year issue in Washington, trade will figure prominently in the Hu-Bush tete-a-tete. Diplomatic analysts in Beijing said the Chinese leader would try to persuade Bush to lift some of the sanctions on hi-tech exports to China that were put in place soon after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Hu is expected to point out that Chinese firms are eager to procure American hi-tech products and services, including those that may have military applications. It is no secret that military engineers working on China's ambitious space program are anxious to tap into American expertise in aeronautics and astronautics. The analysts said the Chinese also enjoyed good timing on this front because high-level defense officials from both nations were due to meet in Beijing later this month to discuss bilateral military ties.
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