China has emerged as the key trading partner of Central Asia—an accomplishment that is greatly due to Dordoi Bazaar’s success in the region. However, Beijing still has much work to do in order to improve its public image and shorten its soft power deficit in the Central Asian region.

Last month, China’s leaders revealed details of the 13th Five-Year Plan, which will guide the economy’s trajectory until 2020. Gone are the directives to expand industrial production at a breakneck pace that characterized previous five-year plans. Now, the focus is on achieving sustainable long-term growth, underpinned by domestic consumption, a stronger services sector, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Now that the IMF has made the RMB its fifth reserve currency, new attention is being paid to the risks associated with cross-border capital flow. Managing these risks requires active participation in global governance and rules making, in particular global exchange rate reform, balance of payment adjustment regime, capital flow management and the reform and coordination of monetary and financial policies on a global scale.

The Group of 20 summit was held in Antalya, Turkey on 15-16 November. Leaders of the member states vowed to strive for a strong and inclusive growth of economy with enhanced investment as the growth engine. They pledged to increase inclusiveness in action so that the growth will benefit everybody.

The push for inclusive approaches and development reflects honest commitment to advancing economic cooperation with open mechanisms and flexible pathways. Non-economic issues such as the global fight against terrorism can be addressed with similarly pragmatic and honest approaches.

APEC 2015 ended with a vow to combat terrorism, yet the Summit refused to be distracted from its true goal – economic development. In the coming years, the United States, China, and the Association of Southeast Nations must compromise if they truly want to invest in both regional peace and economic development.

Except for the disruptive years of the “cultural revolution”, the five-year planning system has given the country a unified strategic outlook, especially in the recent years of opening up and development. The current CPC Central Committee is steering the Chinese government, in the coming five years, to emphasize people’s livelihood and well-being, and to effectively promote economic transformation and consolidation.

In the past, people measured China’s contribution to global economic growth through China’s GDP growth. But many factors in the GDP are the profits created by the foreign companies’ investments in China, so new ways of looking at the impact of China’s economy are in order.

A free-trade agreement for the Asia-Pacific would capitalize on the capabilities and the diversity of APEC countries. As broached by China in 1996, an open economy in the Asia-Pacific is a step toward common development, prosperity and progress for the whole region.

The Philippine’s theme of this year's APEC Summit is “Building Inclusive Economies, Building A Better World.” Like the case for China's 2014 hosting, this 2015 agenda reflects clear Philippine domestic imperatives. As a major labor exporter, the Philippines will work well with the topic of investments in human capital development.