APEC 'China Year' kicks off at Shenzhen meeting

China announced on Friday that the 33rd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting will take place on Nov 18-19 in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, unveiling "Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together" as the theme for the 2026 APEC meetings.

The schedule was part of the outcomes reached at the APEC Informal Senior Officials' Meeting, the first event hosted by China since assuming the 2026 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation chairmanship last month.

The two-day meeting, which concluded on Friday in Shenzhen, officially launched the APEC "China Year".

According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun, China plans to host about 300 events throughout next year, with venues spanning multiple cities across the country.

In addition to the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, the APEC CEO Summit, and joint meetings of foreign and trade ministers will also be held.

Three rounds of senior officials' meetings will be held in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Shanghai and Dalian, Liaoning province in February, May and August, respectively, Guo told a regular news briefing on Friday.

Starting in May, around 10 specialized ministerial or high-level meetings will be convened in various cities, covering key areas such as trade, the digital economy, transportation, tourism, human resources, small and medium-sized enterprises, energy, food security, finance and women, he added.

At the APEC Informal Senior Officials' Meeting in Shenzhen, three priority areas for cooperation were also proposed by China, namely openness, innovation and cooperation, which strongly align with the needs and expectations of all APEC member economies, Guo said.

APEC is the Asia-Pacific's highest-level and most influential economic cooperation mechanism. Its member economies represent nearly 40 percent of the world's population, around half of global trade and more than 60 percent of global GDP.

When addressing the APEC Informal Senior Officials' Meeting on Friday, Vice-Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu said that China is willing to work with all parties to continue pursuing the goal of building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future, strengthen regional economic cooperation, unlock the Asia-Pacific's growth potential, and jointly usher in a new era of development for the region.

Highlighting that "openness is the lifeline of Asia-Pacific prosperity", Ma urged APEC member economies to uphold the multilateral trading system, foster an open regional economic environment, ensure stable and smooth industrial and supply chains, and enhance connectivity.

He described innovation as the engine of regional prosperity and urged APEC member economies to build greater consensus on artificial intelligence and the digital economy, while speeding up work on technical standards and the adoption of new technologies to bridge the region's digital divides.

Ma said that cooperation remains the foundation of prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. He encouraged APEC member economies to fully leverage existing cooperation platforms to transform complementarities into opportunities, strengthen policy dialogue and knowledge sharing, and expand technical cooperation and capacity building.

Victor Munoz, Peru's senior APEC official, said that the meeting opened an opportunity to explore new avenues of technical cooperation with such a vibrant city like Shenzhen. "We are very excited that Shenzhen's experience could also be translated into new forms of cooperation with all APEC economies, particularly with Latin American economies."

"At a time when some countries are growing skeptical of globalization, Shenzhen stands as a powerful example of China's opening-up," said Zheng Yongnian, director of the School of Public Policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen).

Shenzhen, which is widely recognized as China's "Silicon Valley", possesses strong industrial capabilities in sectors such as the internet, artificial intelligence and biomedicine — areas that are also in high demand among other APEC economies, he said. Hosting the 2026 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Shenzhen "will serve as an important catalyst to advance regional economic globalization", he added.

The APEC Informal Senior Officials' Meeting in Shenzhen was attended by nearly 200 representatives from APEC member economies, the APEC Secretariat, observers, academia and business circles.