The recent summit meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is proof of the value of low expectations. Growing concern about the group's relevance and doubts about its will to act lowered the bar for defining this year's meeting as a success. The final communique's call for a new round of world-trade talks to begin next year met the new standard. Given the divisions within the group, that is no mean accomplishment. It is up to APEC leaders to decide whether they will continue to evaluate their performance by this yardstick, and if so, whether the annual get-together is worth the trouble.
On paper, APEC is an impressive group. Its 21 members embrace two-thirds of the world's population, 60 percent of its output and more than half its trade. But the downside of having such a large and diverse group, whose ranks include the world's leading economies and those that are much less developed, is the difficulty they have in finding a common denominator. When launched in 1989, APEC's primary purpose was to work toward free trade and open markets. But reform has not been easy. The Asian financial crisis led to a backlash against globalization that has not yet subsided, despite an impressive rebound in the region. Less developed countries have grown suspicious of free trade and foster doubts about its ability to deliver real benefits to them.
This division was apparent at the economic ministers' conference that preceded this year's summit. The center of the controversy was the call for a new round of trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization. A Malaysian-led lobby argued that the agenda must be agreed upon before a starting date could be set. Developed nations, led by the United States, pressed hard for a call for an immediate resumption of talks, relegating concerns about the agenda to a secondary position. Predictably, a compromise was reached: The final communique called for the formulation of "a balanced and sufficiently broad-based agenda that responds to the interests and concerns of all WTO members" as soon as possible and the launch of a round in 2001.