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In November, the world's biggest trade forum returns to China for the third time, as Shenzhen hosts the 33rd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting.
For New Zealand, a founding APEC member whose largest trading relationship is with Beijing, the summit comes along as the region's two biggest powers are still feeling their way through an uneasy trade truce, and when Wellington's own relationship with China has become somewhat more prickly.
The city of Shenzhen wasn't chosen by accident. Once a humble fishing town, it’s now a byword for Chinese tech ambition - home to multi-media giant Tencent, the drone maker DJI and a manufacturing ecosystem famous for turning ideas into prototypes overnight. The city gives Beijing a ready-made showcase for its tech and AI credentials and is often described as China's answer to Silicon Valley.
This is China's third time hosting APEC, after Shanghai in 2001 and Beijing in 2014, and officials have been explicit that the "China Year" is also about demonstrating the value of APEC engagement to domestic audiences, using the summit to advance priorities tied to the country's 15th Five Year Plan, from encouraging new drivers of economic growth to strengthening its domestic market.
The official theme, "Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together," fits that goal. Chinese officials have consistently presented rising protectionism and anti-globalisation issues as the defining challenge facing the region, with Beijing as the player urging unity and coordinated action, and Washington portrayed as the disruptive and chaotic outlier. Beijing has spent the year running senior officials' meetings across Shanghai, Guangzhou and Dalian, building toward roughly 300 APEC-related events, with a heavy emphasis on artificial intelligence cooperation, digital trade and supply chain resilience, all of which are priorities that conveniently act as showcases for Chinese industry.
The Trump Factor
The biggest unknown hanging over Shenzhen is will Donald Trump turn up? He skipped last year's summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, leaving Xi Jinping to claim the multilateral high ground and pitch China as the more reliable and sensible defender of free trade. Trump's disdain for large multilateral gatherings is well known, and his preference for one-on-one dealmaking tends to run against APEC's consensus-based approach.
But the two leaders have kept talking. Their May summit in Beijing, amid the first visit by a sitting US president to China since 2017,produced an uneasy trade truce. That included tariff reductions and Chinese commitments on rare earth exports and soybean purchases, but also blunt warnings from Xi over Taiwan. Analysts have flagged Shenzhen, alongside December's G20 in Florida, as a likely venue for the two leaders to meet again. Whether that happens, and what state the trade relationship is in by then, will set the tone for the whole week.
Underneath the headline diplomacy, the harder structural disputes haven't gone away. The contest has shifted from tariffs toward China's grip on rare earths and supply chains into manufacturing and defence industries, as well as the on-going issues relating to semiconductor export controls. Taiwan's participation in a summit hosted on the mainland is also likely to draw some scrutiny, given how central the island has become to US-China talks this year.
What's actually on the table
Beyond the leader-level theatrics, 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, and China has been pushing for renewed momentum behind it, alongside digital trade frameworks. Trump will however have different priorities given his liking of bilateral deals.
APEC's Aotearoa Plan of Action, the roadmap adopted when New Zealand hosted the forum in 2021, is also due for its first five-year review, giving Wellington's diplomats a direct stake in what officially gets said in Shenzhen.
The Aotearoa Plan of Action is the delivery mechanism for APEC's 20-year Putrajaya Vision, translating that broad 2040 blueprint into concrete commitments on trade liberalisation, digital policy, and sustainable growth.
This year’s built-in review means the plan, largely shaped by New Zealand diplomats, will be reassessed on Chinese soil. For Wellington, it is one of the few points of direct influence at the summit.
Expect plenty of bilateral business on the sidelines too. Last year's APEC gathering in Gyeongju produced a Canada-China thaw, a South Korea-US tariff agreement and a Japan-US rare earths deal, proof perhaps that, Trump or no Trump, APEC tends to generate its real news on the margins rather than the main hall.
-Asia Media Centre
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