Asia is strong with dissenting opinions – Newspaper Kommersant No. 215 (7416) of 11/21/2022

Last week Bangkok hosted the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. In the current circumstances, Russia at the summit managed to do even more than could be expected: the possibility of cooperation with the most promising new economic region of the world remains, and the Russian Federation itself in the naturally “multipolar” APEC remains an important component of the forum, and its plans for regional diversification of the economy may be are inscribed in the “post-COVID” recovery of the macroregion.

The annual APEC summit, which was held in Thailand in 2022, by coincidence turned out to be especially relevant for many parties interested in the economic development of the Asia-Pacific macroregion. For some high-ranking representatives of states, including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, US Vice President Kamala Harris and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the summit became a de facto continuation of the G20 summit in Bali. At the same time, if the G20 summit was prepared by the Russian Foreign Ministry on the Russian side, then in Bangkok the Russian delegation was headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov. APEC summits traditionally react to world events that are not formally included in its agenda, so the visible part of the plot was the reaction of the APEC countries to the Russian military operation in Ukraine. In the final declaration (with a note that security issues are not the subject of APEC discussions), the formulas for condemning the actions of the Russian Federation remained quite tough (with accession to the decisions of the UN General Assembly of March 2, 2022), the document also indicates the presence of more radical views and approaches and to the situation itself, and to the sanctions imposed by the parties in its course. The position of Thailand, the host country of the APEC summit, which transferred this place for 2023 to the United States, was also quite tough; According to Kommersant’s data, Japan’s position on this issue was also tougher than the “average” one, while China’s position was neutral.

Nevertheless, there were no de facto attempts to isolate the Russian Federation within the framework of APEC, and this is a significant achievement: Asia-Pacific economic cooperation is one of the most important topics for the foreign economic policy of the Russian Federation in the coming years (the country joined APEC in 1998). This was all the more important in the context of the announced agenda of the Bangkok summit: the basic “short-term” subject of discussion was the overall strategy for a coordinated APEC exit from the situation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The specialization of APEC as primarily a forum for removing barriers to investment flows and trade for the Russian Federation in the light of the reorientation of its foreign trade provoked by sanctions as a result of the military operation in Ukraine is more than appropriate. Within APEC itself, the three current slogans put forward by Thailand (“openness”, “connectedness”, “balance”) should be considered, among other things, as a way of an alternative “Western” model of “post-COVID” growth. The macro-region is doomed to it, at least the Asian APEC countries in terms of medium-term GDP dynamics are potential world leaders and profit centers. But China’s current growth problems, global inflation and rising protectionism make the region vulnerable. At the same time, from the point of view of assessing the risks of APEC, the position of the Russian Federation now looks more alarmist than on average – the community itself is now more concerned about the possible problems of the economic “overheating” of the region, which are also likely.

At the same time, APEC in collective rhetoric is inclined to alternative definitions of the main processes in the future economy. Thus, the actual absence of the ESG abbreviation in the APEC documents attracted attention – with a clear interest in environmental and social topics: they are designated as BCG – Bio-Circular-Green-programs with other accents than in the EU and the USA. In a slightly different way than usual at world forums, APEC documents deal with both the problem of food security and the topic of women’s inclusion. And the main topics of the summit – the restoration of global value chains, support for SMEs, technology transfers and digitalization – are considered a little differently, so Andrey Belousov’s speeches at APEC meetings were assessed as important. On the whole, APEC looks closer to Russia’s supposed “ideals of multipolarity” than imaginable alternatives. Considering that for Russia the Asian direction in trade now looks extremely important for supporting its own economy, the results of the APEC summit for the Russian Federation are apparently even better than the results of the G20.

Dmitry Butrin