【今日头条】APEC 高官会议在京开幕

APEC Senior Officials' meeting Starts Anchor: Drawing a roadmap for the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific tops the agenda of this week's APEC meetings in Beijing, as the final round of Senior Officials' meeting begins. CRI's Luo Laiming has more. Reporter: Senior officials from the 21 APEC member economies are attending the two-day meeting, hosted by China's vice foreign minister Li Baodong. Alan Bollard, the Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat, says the meeting touches upon key agendas including drawing a roadmap for the proposed Free Trade Area for the Asia Pacific. "Today in the officials' meeting, we are talking about all the projects that have bee carried out through the year, that are now coming together for final agreement. So far, we've talking about the Free Trade Area for Asia Pacific, global supply chains,we also want to talk about regulatory reform and we are going to talk about connecting the economies of the region." The concept of FTAAP was initially proposed in 2004. Earlier this year, China proposed to launch a feasibility study on the subject in a bid to press for economic integration in the region. Zhang Lijun, Chairman of the China APEC Development Council, says a FTAAP will help to consolidate numerous regional free trade deals. "There are so many bilateral or multilateral free trade agreements within the region, which has led to what we call the Spaghetti Bowl Phenomenon. That is, the interweaving of all sorts of preferential trade policies has led to vicious competition. That is not so beneficial. So, through FTAAP, we hope to build up a unanimously accepted trade agreement. With such an agreement, you know, we will have a more unified tariff within the Asia-Pacific region". Currently, there are 56 different FTAs in the Asia-Pacific region. Alan Bollard echoes the view, saying he is hopeful that a roadmap will start to take shape. "We hope that we will be putting out to ministers a good proposal for a roadmap and a study. And that means China is leading initiatives to make it much clearer what FTAAP is. And how we get there, and what it involves. It's an attempt to take a longer term view beyond the various trade negotiations that are going on at the moment. We are quite hopeful about it." Bollard also says an anti-corruption and transparency experts' task force network is expected to be set up during the upcoming meetings in a bid to boost regional cooperation against corruption. Three rounds of senior officials' meetings have already been held in China this year. Officials at the vice ministerial level attend such meetings, which are usually held three or four times a year. For CRI, I'm Luo Laiming.