The Asia-Pacific: More Stable than Anyone Thinks

... with the WTO, the idea is to make membership in the TPP indispensable and only then to invite China and Russia to join. China is using its economic leverage to promote an alternative to the TPP that it calls the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). It has had little success. As the host of the November 2014 APEC summit, China was able to push through an agreement to conduct a two-year study of the potential for an FTAAP, in effect delaying any formal negotiations until 2017 at the earliest....