These, of course, are political issues. And APEC is supposed to be about economic ones, mainly trade. But momentum on APEC's goal of forging multilateral trade deals has lagged ever since the 1994 meeting in Indonesia. The Bogor Declaration adopted there boldly targeted the elimination of tariffs by 2010 in developed member economies and 2020 in developing ones. But action plans for achieving those objectives continue to be more histories of past accomplishments than blueprints of new initiatives.
Some critics are so frustrated they seem ready to give up.
That would be too easy, and would ignore the value that APEC presents as a place for leaders to gather annually in a relatively informal setting. The meeting between China's President Jiang Zemin and his counterpart Bill Clinton at the Manila forum in 1996 set the stage for successful state visits in 1997 and 1998. This year's gathering offered the two leaders neutral ground to move beyond Belgrade and toward renewed discussions of China's entry to the World Trade Organization. Not at all. In fact, APEC's annual meeting did make some modest progress.