29th October 2025 - (Beijing) Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to South Korea in the coming days to join fellow APEC leaders, seeking to rally support for open, inclusive globalisation and fresh economic momentum across the Asia-Pacific. The visit comes as the International Monetary Fund forecasts regional growth to ease from 4.5 per cent this year to 4.1 per cent in 2026, a projection that has sharpened calls to deepen cooperation and cultivate new engines of expansion.
Xi is expected to reiterate a familiar ambition: an open Asia-Pacific economy that continues to power the world. APEC economies collectively generate more than 60 per cent of global GDP in 2025, and Beijing has treated the forum as a priority arena for advancing free trade. China now counts 15 of the other 20 APEC members among its free trade partners, a web of ties that underscores the scale of regional integration.
Malaysia offers a telling case study. China has been its largest trading partner for 16 straight years, with bilateral commerce reaching a record US$212 billion in 2024. That relationship has grown more granular too, from the rapid delivery of Malaysian durians to Chinese supermarket shelves to the further opening of China's market to the fruit last year. During a state visit to Kuala Lumpur, Xi said Beijing would work with ASEAN to draw on Asia's stability to counter global uncertainty; Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who chairs ASEAN in 2025, emphasised that the bloc rejects unilateral tariffs and intends to sustain growth through cooperation.
Xi's advocacy for openness predates his national leadership. As a young official in Xiamen in the 1980s, he explored free-port models and led a study trip to Singapore in 1987, laying groundwork for Xiamen's evolution into a special economic zone. That early experimentation foreshadowed a broader programme of outward engagement, culminating in milestones such as hosting APEC leaders in Beijing in 2014, when the "Beijing Roadmap" set the course toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. Today, pathways for that goal are clearer as China fully implements its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership commitments and supports the newly signed China-ASEAN Free Trade Area Version 3.0.
On his first APEC circuit in 2013, he proposed the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in Indonesia, a cornerstone of the Belt and Road Initiative that has since reshaped routes and logistics links. Rail projects from the China-Laos line to the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway and Malaysia's East Coast Rail Link illustrate the scale of the network. In Latin America, the new Chancay port in Peru, opened with Xi last November, will trim shipping times to China to around 23 days and reduce logistics costs by at least a fifth, part of a vision to drive trade through modern transport corridors and integrated logistics.
Xi has argued that interdependence should be seen as an opportunity for countries to complement one another and achieve mutual benefit. In March, he met more than 40 global chief executives in Beijing, pledging to facilitate trade and investment and noting that shutting out others does not advance one's own interests. The message resonated with business groups, including the U.S.-China Business Council, which framed investment in China as a long-term bet on growth.
China has expanded visa-free access and cultural programmes to bring more visitors and artists into dialogue with its own cultural life. The softer side of diplomacy was on show at the 2024 APEC Leaders' Meeting in Peru, where Xi and Chilean President Gabriel Boric discussed literature and cultural exchange, reflecting a belief that familiarity and shared understanding buttress durable partnerships.
As APEC marks three decades, Xi has repeatedly returned to a guiding question: how to create the next "golden thirty years" for the region. His answer centres on building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future, encapsulated by Putrajaya Vision 2040, which aspires to an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful regional community by mid-century. That ethos extends to climate action, with China partnering Brunei -- host of the ASEAN Centre for Climate Change -- on initiatives spanning digital technology, artificial intelligence and new energy alongside traditional areas such as agriculture and fisheries.