MANILA: Global leaders are set to descend on Asia for a series of high-stakes meetings that will tackle everything from AI to trade to, potentially, nuclear disarmament.
AFP looks at a few of the key issues to watch for in the days ahead:
The 11-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) opens its final leaders’ summit of the year on Sunday in Manila, while French President Emmanuel Macron attends a Francophonie summit in Phnom Penh.
Focus then shifts north for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Shenzhen.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to be a key figure at Apec, while India’s Narendra Modi will be attending the Asean meet.
US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will travel to both.
Analysts told AFP that the bruising midterm election defeat Trump recently suffered will not appreciably change how the US president is perceived.
“I don’t think the region will see him as a lame duck,” Siew Mun Tang, former head of the Asean Studies Centre at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, told AFP.
“He has two more years. He can do a lot of things.”
Xi-Trump-Putin meet
The agenda for a proposed sit-down between China’s Xi Jinping, Trump and Putin may remain a mystery, but no meeting at the Apec conference will attract more attention.
While Putin has pushed for talks on Ukraine, Trump this week suggested the focus would be on denuclearisation and ending his faltering war in Iran.
Analysts who spoke to AFP cautioned expectations should be kept to a minimum.
“The symbolism… will account for a good portion of its substance,” the Brookings Institution’s Ryan Hass told AFP.
While he expects Xi and Putin to give Trump “a respectful hearing” on arms control, Hass said they will likely only “agree on broad principles without committing to any follow-on actions”.
Wang Wen, dean of Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, agreed major outcomes were unlikely, calling it “a high probability that talks could end without a breakthrough”.
Separately, a meeting Trump once hoped for with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears dead in the water, with Pyongyang rejecting repeated overtures.
Eyeing AI safeguards
Artificial intelligence will be a hot topic at Apec, after Xi and Trump agreed in September to set up a “communication channel” for AI incidents.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed fears that AI could pose a threat to humanity. But despite the countries’ fierce tech rivalry, calls for cooperation are growing due to shared concerns regarding bioweapons and infrastructure hacking.
Xi in September that Washington and Beijing have a responsibility to “develop and manage AI for good and ensure that the development of AI is always under human control”.
Apec talks could build on the pair’s previous communication channel agreement, Stephen Wu, founder of Carthage Capital, told AFP.
