China pledges further opening as leaders scramble for free trade

China's President Xi Jinping applauds while attending a meeting of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Ceo Summit in Lima, Peru, November 19, 2016. REUTERS

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged on Saturday to further open the world's second-largest economy as leaders of Asia-Pacific countries gathered in Peru to find new free-trade options after Donald Trump was elected U.S. president on a protectionist platform.

The annual APEC summit got under way in Lima just over a week after Trump's surprise victory dashed hopes of the largest-ever U.S.-proposed trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), coming to fruition.

U.S. President Barack Obama has championed the TPP as a way to counter China's rise, but his administration has now stopped trying to win congressional approval for the deal signed by 12 economies in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, excluding China. Without U.S. approval the current agreement cannot be implemented.

Throughout his campaign, Trump strongly criticized U.S. free-trade deals as bad for jobs, vowing to pull the world's biggest economy out of the TPP and promising to impose tariffs on imports from trade partners China and Mexico. Read More...