Global Impact | China hot on the agenda at Apec, G20 gatherings as Trump’s spectre looms large

In this week’s issue of the Global Impact newsletter, we look back at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting in Lima and G20 gathering in Rio de Janeiro

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China’s President Xi Jinping and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva show bilateral agreements after a meeting at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:00pm, 2 Dec 2024Updated: 5:45pm, 2 Dec 2024

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We were only beginning to absorb the implications of US president-elect Trump’s stunning victory in this month’s election when the focus of world attention shifted a few thousand kilometres south.

Leaders representing the Apec descended on Lima, Peru, within a week of the election, before moving on to Rio de Janeiro for the G20’s annual meeting.

But two figures dominated the high-profile events: Xi, who headlined events in four locations and signed dozens of agreements, and Trump, who was nowhere near South America yet loomed over most of the discussions.

Xi arrived in Peru accompanied by some 400 businesspeople and entrepreneurs to attend the summit, but in some ways, China’s arrival had preceded him in the form of excitement – and concern among some American officials – around a multibillion-dollar Chinese-funded megaport on the country’s coast.

Funded through China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which Washington has been trying to counter, the Chancay Port will open a conduit for critical minerals and other strategic South American commodities to China and the rest of Asia.

Just a few months earlier, it appeared that an outstanding legal question over management rights might impede Xi’s ability to inaugurate the port during Apec.