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Xi expected to hold first talks with Japan's new PM

Takaichi

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Canada seeks to restart engagement with China

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Host South Korea warns of changes to free trade order

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Bessent stands in for Trump at APEC summit discussions

By Jihoon Lee and Eduardo Baptista

GYEONGJU, Oct 31 (Reuters) - China's Xi Jinping will

take centre stage at an annual gathering of Pacific Rim leaders

in South Korea on Friday, expected to hold talks with Canadian,

Japanese and Thai counterparts after securing a fragile trade

truce with U.S. President Donald Trump.

That agreement, struck just before Trump left South Korea,

skipping the main two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

summit, will suspend further curbs on China's exports of rare

earths that threatened to jam up global supply chains.

Bolstering supply chains is a key focus of this year's APEC

talks, hosted in the historic town of Gyeongju. The 21-member

economic club aims to encourage cooperation and reduce trade and

investment barriers, though decisions made at meetings are

non-binding and consensus has been increasingly difficult.

"As the free trade order undergoes dramatic changes, global

economic uncertainty is deepening and trade and investment are

losing momentum," South Korean President Lee Jae Myung told the

gathered leaders at the opening session on Friday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stood in for the

absent Trump.

"Changes unseen in a century are accelerating across the

world," Xi told the assembled leaders in a speech calling for

protection of the multilateral trading system and deeper

economic cooperation.

"The rougher the seas, the more we must pull together," Xi

said.

XI SET TO MEET JAPAN'S NEW HAWKISH LEADER

With the leader of the world's biggest economy absent, attention

turns to Xi, who is expected to hold his first talks with

Japan's newly elected leader Sanae Takaichi.

The leaders are expected to hold talks on Friday, sources

familiar with the matter said. Before she departed for the

summit on Thursday, Takaichi told reporters that arrangements

were underway to meet Xi.

While relations between the historic rivals have been on a

sounder footing in recent years, Takaichi's surprise elevation

to become Japan's first female leader may strain ties due to her

nationalistic views and hawkish security policies.

One of her first acts since taking office last week was to

accelerate a military build-up aimed at deterring the

territorial ambitions of an increasingly assertive China in East

Asia. Japan also hosts the biggest concentration of U.S.

military abroad.

The detention of Japanese nationals in China and Beijing's

import restrictions on Japanese beef, seafood and agricultural

products are also likely to be among sensitive issues on the

agenda.

CANADA SEEKS TO RESTART CHINA ENGAGEMENT

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet Xi at 4 p.m. (0700

GMT), his office said, aiming to restart broad engagement with

China after years of poor relations.

Embroiled in a bitter trade war with its biggest trading

partner, the United States, Canada is aiming to wean itself off

that overwhelming dependence and seek new markets. China is

Canada's second-biggest trading partner.

Under the leadership of Carney's predecessor Justin Trudeau,

Canadians were detained and executed by the Chinese government

and Canada's security authorities concluded that China

interfered in at least two federal elections. Xi also publicly

scolded Trudeau, alleging he leaked their discussions to the

press.

China announced preliminary anti-dumping duties on Canadian

canola imports in August, a year after Canada said it would levy

a 100% tariff on imports of Chinese electric vehicles. Senior

officials from both sides met to discuss those issues earlier

this month, but gave no indication of any looming breakthrough.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is also due to meet Xi

in the afternoon, Bangkok said, fresh from signing an enhanced

ceasefire deal with neighbouring Cambodia on Sunday overseen by

Trump.

The U.S. president has repeatedly touted himself as a global

peace broker. Xi told Trump on Thursday that China also played a

major role in advocating for dialogue and reconciliation on

various pressing matters.

SOUTH KOREA HOPEFUL OF JOINT STATEMENT

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said on Thursday that

negotiations were still taking place on a joint statement even

for the ministerial meeting itself, but added that he was

hopeful it would be adopted together with a leaders' declaration

when the summit concludes on Saturday.

"We are very close," he told a briefing. Two APEC member

nation diplomats privately expressed scepticism that any

statement would be particularly substantive given fractures in

global politics. APEC failed to adopt a joint declaration in

2018 and 2019, during Trump's first presidency.

Nvidia's ( NVDA ) CEO Jensen Huang will be speaking this afternoon to

a gathering of executives running parallel to the APEC Summit.

Huang has had a whirlwind week, with Nvidia ( NVDA ) becoming

the first company to surpass a $5 trillion valuation but the

issue of the U.S. chipmaker's sale of advanced AI chips in China

was seemingly left out of Thursday's Xi-Trump summit.