San Francisco will be thrust onto the global stage in five weeks, when the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit kicks off Nov. 12 with President Joe Biden and other world leaders gathering in the city for discussions on trade, the environment and other issues. But with just a few weeks to go, big questions are lingering over who’s coming and what they’re going to do.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is the biggest unknown. The Chinese leader has been coy about whether he’s attending, and Biden said Friday that a meeting with him in San Francisco is “a possibility” but has not been confirmed.
Biden and Xi last met nearly a year ago on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia in November 2022. Xi skipped the G20 summit held in India last month that Biden attended.
If Xi were to RSVP “no” to the gathering, it would cast a further frost over U.S.-Chinese relations, which have been chilly amid tensions over trade frictions, espionage accusations, issues such as China’s tacit support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and what the U.S. sees as increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford University, called it “a little strange” that Xi’s participation was still up in the air given how close the summit is.
“Given everything else that's going on in the world, between the United States and China, there's a lot of freight attached to that meeting,” he said. “At some point, they have to make a decision, because there's all sorts of security and other ramifications that go along with that.”
It was unclear whether Monday’s incident at China’s San Francisco consulate, in which a man drove a car into the building’s visa office and was fatally shot by police, would add to the uncertainty surrounding the visit. Chinese diplomats condemned the “extremely bad” incursion and said it had made “solemn representations” to the U.S. government about the incident.
U.S. Officials Make Push to Secure Xi’s Participation
APEC, established in 1989, is a regional economic forum intended to promote economic integration. It has 21 member economies, which account for about 38% of the global population, nearly two-thirds of global GDP and half of all trade.
The 21 APEC members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.S. and Vietnam.
Though there are a few large meetings where the heads of state get together as a group, much of the significant news is made in bilateral sessions like the anticipated Xi-Biden meeting.
“It’s not like 21 leaders or 19 leaders sit around a table together and talk about Ukraine. That's not what happens,” explained East-West Center Senior Fellow Charles E. Morrison, an expert on APEC.
“It’s a lot of—and this is really the guts of APEC—side meetings,” Morrison said. “Somebody like Biden will not spend that much time with other leaders all together. Much of his time is spent in bilateral meetings. And those bilateral meetings are awfully important.”
Xi’s calculus has been complicated by a number of factors both domestic and international. On the home front, the Chinese economy is slowing and reports say the defense minister is under investigation for corruption. To the displeasure of Beijing, China hawks in the U.S. Congress have pressed the Biden administration to exclude Hong Kong leader John Lee from the summit.
Washington put Lee, along with 10 other Hong Kong and Chinese officials, under sanctions in 2020 after the Chinese territory imposed a new national security law seen by critics as a bid to stifle dissent and the pro-democracy movement. Lee said in July that he was “still waiting for the invitation letter.”
Hong Kong’s representative office in San Francisco was unable to provide information by press time.
Hong Kong, a former British territory that was returned to Chinese rule in 1997, joined APEC in 1991, at the same time as China and Taiwan.
A string of recent meetings between Chinese and U.S. officials has raised expectations that a Xi-Biden meeting will happen in San Francisco. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in June. After that, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited, as did climate envoy John Kerry.
Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, held two days of talks with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in Malta last month. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is traveling to China this month, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is currently leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to China.
“Whether Xi Jinping comes or not will be read, rightfully so, as an interesting signal of whether the Chinese really want to reverse field and repair the relationship with the United States,” Sneider said. “I think the administration has gone about as far as they probably can go to signal their interest in doing that.”
Microsoft, Citi, FedEx, Pfizer Chief Executives Expected at CEO Summit
During the week of Nov. 12, top-level leaders will convene on a variety of topics. Yellen, the U.S. treasury secretary, will host a finance ministers’ meeting, while Blinken and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai will host their foreign and trade counterparts, respectively.
A parallel APEC CEO Summit is planned for Moscone Center Nov. 14-16. Among the chief executives expected for the program are Exxon Mobil’s Darren Woods, Qualcomm’s Christiano Amon, Pfizer’s Dr. Albert Bourla, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Organon’s Kevin Ali.
Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to address the CEO Summit on Nov. 15.
Other expected speakers include Robert Mortiz, global chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers; Condoleezza Rice, director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup; Raj Subramanian, CEO of FedEx; and Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard.
A number of foreign heads of state are also expected to speak at the CEO Summit.
Sneider said many American business executives remain worried about even visiting China these days due to a sense of “a repressive atmosphere toward foreign investment.”
“It’s really pretty scary, I think, for people. They worried about people getting arrested, people getting taken in for security reasons, and so on,” Sneider said. APEC offers China and Chinese companies the opportunity to make some positive overtures, he said, “if they really want to go back to some level of assurance that people could do business with China.”
Putin Is Out; Mexico’s President Coming After All
At least one no-show is all but certain. Russia is a member of APEC, but with leader Vladimir Putin being persona non grata due to the war in Ukraine, there is no chance he will attend.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had announced he would skip the summit in San Francisco because his country “has no relations” with Peru, another APEC economy. However, on Monday, he reversed course.
"I rethought it," Lopez Obrador said during a regular press conference, pointing to Biden's invitation and the importance of having good ties with the United States, Reuters reported. "A very good relationship with the United States is good for us," he added.
López Obrador has claimed that Peru’s current government was installed by a coup. He still considers ousted President Pedro Castillo to be the country’s legitimate leader.
Among the leaders who are reportedly attending are Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Vietnamese President Vo Van Truong, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, and Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah.
Likely to attend are Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and South Korea President Yoon Suk-Yeol, though local consulates said they were not able to confirm their attendance last week. Some consulates said final decisions will not be made until about two weeks before the summit.
Other Unknowns: Concerts, Security Zones and More
City officials involved in planning APEC told The Standard that many of the government-related events, as well as the corresponding CEO Summit, have yet to be finalized.
One of the more anticipated offerings is a free concert at Chase Center, but the lead performer has still not been confirmed. However, the performance will not be in the home of the Golden State Warriors but instead be held in the Thrive City outdoor gathering space.
Another question that remains unanswered is how far the Secret Service will expand the security perimeter for APEC. That announcement is expected Oct. 18.
City officials announced last week that they had met their goal of raising $20 million to host events and activities during the international confab. But with many of the details of those parties and other gatherings still TBD, it’s unclear how smoothly the confab will go.
“I don't know whether the city of San Francisco is prepared or not, that's an interesting question,” said Stanford’s Sneider. “Obviously, it's a moment where you could potentially either chip away a little bit at the negative imagery of San Francisco, or you could get the opposite effect—tons of stories about how awful life in San Francisco is. Knowing our dear friends in the national media, I suspect the latter is going to be the case.”