What APEC is and how it works

What Canberra produced

Ministers from twelve economies met at Canberra in November 1989, and what came out of the meeting was another meeting. Nothing was signed then, and nothing has been signed since. The membership list dates those twelve to 6 and 7 November 1989, while the declaration adopted two years later recalls the same gathering as 5 to 7 November 1989. Both dates sit in the forum's own record.

The Seoul APEC Declaration, adopted at the ministerial meeting held from 12 to 14 November 1991, is the nearest thing to a founding text. It states objectives as purposes: to sustain the growth and development of the region for the common good of its peoples, and to reduce barriers to trade in goods and services and investment among participants in a manner consistent with GATT principles. Its organisation clause provides an annual ministerial meeting, a senior officials' meeting to prepare it, and working groups to carry each project, with the host of a ministerial meeting providing the chairman. It creates no court, no majority vote, and no way to hold a participant to anything it has said.

The Secretariat sits in Singapore, funded by member contributions that APEC puts at about USD 5 million a year. Ministers agreed at Sydney in September 2007 to raise those contributions by 30% from 2009, which was the first increase since 1998.

The word for a member

"The word 'economies' is used to describe APEC members because the APEC cooperative process is predominantly concerned with trade and economic issues, with members engaging with one another as economic entities." That sentence from the membership page is doing precise work. The 1991 declaration opens on representatives of Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand and the United States of America, and it opens participation "to those economies in the Asia-Pacific region which: have strong economic linkages in the Asia-Pacific region; and accept the objectives and principles of APEC as embodied in this Declaration". Later participation is decided "on the basis of a consensus of all existing participants".

Two names on that list have moved with the record. The 1991 text writes Hong Kong; the tenth ministerial meeting in November 1998 writes Hong Kong, China, and this catalogue files Hong Kong as a dependency of China from 1 July 1997. Chinese Taipei is the name the list has carried since 1991, and Taiwan's record here is filed as disputed. The catalogue reports the names the forum uses and settles nothing behind them.

Nothing signed, nothing owed

APEC's own account of its method is unusually flat about what it does not do. "APEC operates on the basis of voluntary cooperation and consensus. Its decisions are non-binding, allowing economies with diverse systems and levels of development to work together in a flexible and pragmatic way." It describes itself as "the only international intergovernmental grouping in the world committed to reducing barriers to trade and investment without requiring its members to enter into legally binding obligations."

The instrument that carries the liberalisation is the Individual Action Plan, a schedule each member writes for itself and revises annually. The leaders' declaration issued at Vancouver on 25 November 1997 records that "individual Action Plans remain the core mechanism for APEC's trade and investment liberalization activity", and that "APEC's liberalization proceeds on a voluntary basis, propelled by commitments taken at the highest level."

Consensus has visible edges, and the published record shows them. The document from the leaders' meeting at Port Moresby on 18 November 2018 is a chair's statement, which says at the top that it "reflects the chair's assessment of the prevailing views of all APEC member economies as expressed during discussions", and that "Most economies agreed to the following text, while a small number had alternative or additional views on paragraphs 9, 16 and 17." The same series carries a host economy leader's statement dated 7 December 2019 where a declaration would otherwise stand.

Bogor, and what came after

The declaration adopted at Bogor on 15 November 1994 put dates on the aim, and split them: free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific, with "the industrialized economies achieving the goal of free and open trade and investment no later than the year 2010 and developing economies no later than the year 2020". Neither date carried a consequence, because there was no obligation to breach.

At Kuala Lumpur on 20 November 2020 the leaders noted the final review of progress towards the Bogor Goals and proclaimed a successor, the APEC Putrajaya Vision 2040, whose text asks for "an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific community by 2040".

Joining, and the question left open

The admissions read straight off the membership list. China, Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei came in together at Seoul from 12 to 14 November 1991, the ministers of the day welcoming the participation of all three at once. Mexico and Papua New Guinea joined at Seattle from 17 to 19 November 1993, Chile from 11 to 12 November 1994, and Peru, Russia and Vietnam from 14 to 15 November 1998.

Ministers meeting at Vancouver in November 1997 endorsed Guidelines on APEC Membership and then passed the decision upward: "A variety of views were expressed on the number of new members to be included and the timing. However, the final decision on this matter was left to Leaders." The tenth ministerial meeting welcomed the three new members the following November, and the list has not moved since. Ministers came back to the subject in 2010 and left it where it was, agreeing that the question of new membership would go on being reviewed.

What a member actually gets

The most concrete benefit is a card. The APEC Business Travel Card is issued for five years and gives its holder fast track immigration processing at major international airports for short-term business travel of up to 60 or 90 days. Canada and the United States "are transitional members of the ABTC scheme and do not offer reciprocal entry arrangements, but do provide fast track immigration processing at major international airports".

Tariffs are not part of the arrangement. Goods crossing between members meet whatever schedule the importing member applies, because the forum has no common external tariff and no instrument that could impose one. Members who wanted binding terms with each other signed them elsewhere, in agreements this catalogue files under their own names.

Every member has a coast on the Pacific or on one of the seas opening into it, and the roster reaches four continents as this catalogue files them.