A Thai technician works at a factory in Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone which hosts more than 60 Chinese enterprises in the east coast of Thailand on May 11 (XINHUA)

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum has always been an organization that has a lower profile than it deserves. Set up as an initiative of the then-Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke in early 1989, its annual meetings are better known for the photo shoots showing the 21 leaders attending in the national costume of the host country than for substantive policy accomplishments. This is a pity. APEC does serve an important purpose, and should be better known and appreciated in the rest of the world, and perhaps even in the Asia-Pacific.

The original reason for APEC's founding was simply that there were limited formal channels of multi-lateral communication in one of the world's most important regions. A look at the current membership list bears this out. It includes the United States, China and Japan, the world's first, second and third largest economies. APEC membership has a combined population making up one third of the planet.

Politically, in terms of development level, size and ethnicity, there can be few more diverse groupings. The current membership runs from the United States with a per-capita GDP of $54, 000, to Papua New Guinea, with $2,300 per head. It runs from China, with a population of over 1.3 billion, to Brunei, with just under half a million people.

The geographical extent of the membership is simply staggering, running from Russia, reaching to the eastern edge of Europe, down to New Zealand in the southern hemisphere, to Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Canada. The fact that since 2011 India has attended with observer status adds to the forum's significance.

In view of these differences and disparities, it might seem hard to think of an issue the members can easily discuss on equal terms with each other. But in fact, as APEC's name makes clear, means of strengthening economic cooperation and co-prosperity is something they all share concerns about. In the current climate, there are plenty of challenges in this area they share in common, from sustainability, to producing new sources of growth, to trying to work out ways of doing better business with each other.

TPP adds complication

APEC's work this year will be complicated by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) initiative with 12 members, some of whom are also APEC members. TPP aims to create its own discrete market, even though at the moment the key force behind it, the United States, has yet to ratify the agreement, and looks unlikely to do so any time soon because of domestic opposition, particularly from the Democrats opposed to the impact the deal might have on the U.S. jobs market.

Ratified or not, the TPP raises a number of questions about what sort of free trade arrangements and liberalization are now necessary in the era in which, to all intents and purposes, the World Trade Organization (WTO) global, multilateral deals look like they are no longer possible, at least for now. Even for the TPP, there are plenty of issues over just how easy it will be to guarantee reciprocal trade, investment and services access to the member economies. Implementation might prove to be a tough and contentious process.

With the stagnation of the Doha negotiations under the framework of WTO, regional trade deals have become more common. Australia, China, South Korea, New Zealand, and Singapore have all, in the last few years, signed bilateral free trade deals amongst themselves.

But the simple fact is that taking the APEC as a single economic group, with all its internal diversity and complexity, growth is not as robust as it was two or three years ago. China is entering an era of the "new normal," with GDP growth rate dipping around 7 percent. Australia is experiencing one of the worst slowdowns in the last two decades, as its dependence on commodity exports is hit by a drop in demand. The United States might currently be the exception, having seen decent growth and good job creation in the last few years. But there are worried sounds from many that this will prove unsustainable in the long term and that a new economic drop might be imminent. For Japan, the battle to re-energize its economy continues under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his brand of economics. For no APEC member at the moment is growth as straightforward as it had been in the recent past.

APEC membership is globally important in this area because it covers a region of huge dynamism and potential, whatever the current travails, one in which emerging middle classes are regarded as the key to future global growth and opportunity. And the battle, both for individual members and for the whole group, is how best to unlock this. They matter to each other in this context, because none can exist in a situation of autarky. So having a common framework they are able to work together within matters, in areas like provision of services, standardization or rules, and openness of markets to each other.

Despite this, APEC is a very loose association. It does not issue binding edicts, does not have empowered central officials, and certainly does not operate with anything like the cohesiveness of the European Union (EU). Most importantly, it does not have the powers to negotiate trade protocols. It is a space where members talk, and can announce specific initiatives or collective ambitions. But it operates on the principle of consensus. If one of the 21 doesn't agree with an idea, then it doesn't get pursued. This is APEC's strength and, of course, at the same time, a potential weakness.

Tangible benefits

Despite this, in recent years APEC has produced important news. In the meeting held in Beijing last November, the most important outcome was in fact a bilateral one, on climate change, between the United States and China. As two of the world's largest carbon emission producers, that these two powers were able to agree on a framework deal was hugely significant, and that they did it through an opportunity offered by the APEC meeting.

There must be hopes that prior to the upcoming international meeting in Paris on climate change, APEC, among its membership, might be able to announce something in this area amongst the other members. It covers, after all, an area which will have to be part of any final global deal cutting back on emissions. It has major energy producers, and huge energy users. So something constructive in this arena would be a great scene setter for the Paris conference.

APEC members might also reflect on the need to show leadership. The EU, held as the great example of multilateralism, is undergoing an unprecedented series of internal challenges. These range from the continuing issues posed by the eurozone crisis, to the migration challenge provoked by unrest in the Middle East, to the threat of a UK exit in the next two years should a referendum demand. The EU is undergoing a period of painful, and in some areas treacherous, readjustment.

For APEC, however low profile the meetings have so far proven to be, it is likely that collectively they will have to start thinking much more of the best framework in which they can really work together to show stronger leadership at a time when it is lacking elsewhere. Something akin to a free trade agreement running across the area would be far too ambitious, at the moment. The idea of strengthening the forum so it has more institutional presence and strength is also politically unlikely.

But there are going to be increasing areas where it will be in the APEC membership interests to work together more deeply, and to find common cause amongst themselves, and, most important of all, to signal this to the world so that it starts paying more attention to what they are doing, and understanding why this matters.

The author is an op-ed contributor to Beijing Review  and professor of Chinese Studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King's College in the UK  

Copyedited by Mara Lee Durrell  

Comments to liuyunyun@bjreview.com