China’s Xi to meet Canadian, Japanese leaders after Trump trade truce

GYEONGJU: China’s Xi Jinping took centre stage at an annual gathering of Pacific Rim leaders in South Korea on Friday (Oct 31), expected to hold talks with Canadian, Japanese and Thai counterparts after securing a fragile trade truce with US President Donald Trump. 

That agreement, struck just before Trump left South Korea, skipping the main two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, will suspend further curbs on China’s exports of rare earths that threatened to jam up global supply chains.

Bolstering supply chains and reducing trade barriers is a key focus of the talks, hosted in the historic town of Gyeongju. Yet decisions made at the 21-member economic club are non-binding and finding consensus has been increasingly difficult due to geopolitical strains.

“Changes unseen in a century are accelerating across the world,” Xi told the assembled leaders at the closed-door opening session on Friday morning, according to China’s foreign ministry.

“The rougher the seas, the more we must pull together,” Xi added, in a speech calling for protection of the multilateral trading system and deeper economic cooperation.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stood in for the absent Trump.

XI SET TO MEET JAPAN’S NEW HAWKISH LEADER 

With the leader of the world’s biggest economy absent, attention turns to Xi, who is expected to hold his first talks with Japan’s newly elected leader Sanae Takaichi

The leaders are expected to hold talks on Friday, sources familiar with the matter said. Before she departed for the summit on Thursday, Takaichi told reporters that arrangements were underway to meet Xi.

While relations between the historic rivals have been on a sounder footing in recent years, Takaichi’s surprise elevation to become Japan’s first female leader may strain ties due to her nationalistic views and hawkish security policies.

One of her first acts since taking office last week was to accelerate a military build-up aimed at deterring the territorial ambitions of an increasingly assertive China in East Asia. Japan also hosts the biggest concentration of US military abroad.

The detention of Japanese nationals in China and Beijing’s import restrictions on Japanese beef, seafood and agricultural products are also likely to be among sensitive issues on the agenda.