Assessing APEC in an Era of US-China Rivalry -APEC’s Transition from a Talking Shop to a Showroom-

Assessing APEC in an Era of US-China Rivalry -APEC’s Transition from a Talking Shop to a Showroom-

The paper examines whether the role of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in promoting free trade in the Asia-Pacific has been effective or not. Influenced by long-lasting cooperative experience both at economic and at security level among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, a group of Asian-Pacific countries, which were supported by European and American counterparts, decided to create APEC in 1989 as an attempt to promote free trade among member economies. Despite some notable achievements in the facilitation of economic and technical cooperation in and out of the region, APEC has obtained a stigma of a ‘talking shop’ mostly from the prevalence of free-trade rhetoric devoid of concrete actions. The paper moves this critique one step further by claiming that APEC has begun to transit from a talking shop to a ‘showroom’. This viewpoint asserts that the most powerful states monopolize agendas at meetings and vie for presenting their preferred vision and worldviews, which are reflective of their national interests, to an international audience. By focusing on geo-politicization of talks at the apex of great powers rivalry at APEC, coupled with the lack of institutionalization within it, the paper illustrates that APEC now functions as a showroom between the US and China, losing its appeal as a structured economic dialogue or institution.