BANGKOK – Asia-Pacific leaders will gather in November 2023 in San Francisco, Vice-President Kamala Harris announced today, offering a potential opportunity for a rare United States visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Harris, who is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, announced the week beginning November 12, 2023 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, as this year’s meeting wrapped up in Bangkok.
“There is no better place to host Apec 2023 than California, a state known for economic innovation,” Harris said.
She said that President Joe Biden’s administration would focus the summit on sustainability and moving economies away from carbon as part of the fight against climate change.
“We will promote economic growth and prosperity for the American people, and people throughout the Indo-Pacific region,” she said.
Apec, born in the 1980s, is focused on trade rather than political questions and each year offers an occasion for leaders of the 21 members to meet on the sidelines.
Apec this year took place immediately after a separate summit in Bali of the Group of 20 economies, where Xi met Biden in their first meeting as heads of state.
Harris also spoke to Xi at the Apec summit, part of a renewed effort by the world’s two largest economies to prevent high tensions from spiralling out of control.
Xi last visited the US in 2017, meeting then-president Donald Trump at his Florida estate, but relations between the two countries later sharply deteriorated over trade, Taiwan, human rights and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Another Apec member is Russia but, unlike with Xi, the US has made clear that it will not deal as normally with Russian President Vladimir Putin after he ignored warnings and invaded Ukraine in February.
The US earlier announced that Apec foreign ministers will meet next year in Seattle and that trade officials would gather in Detroit.
The US was Apec’s last host in 2011 when then-president Barack Obama invited leaders to his birth state of Hawaii. – AFP, November 19, 2022
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