GYEONGJU, South Korea - China's President Xi Jinping took centre stage at an annual gathering of Pacific Rim leaders in South Korea on Oct 31, and is expected to hold talks with Canadian, Japanese and Thai counterparts after securing a fragile trade truce with US President Donald Trump.

That agreement, struck just before Mr Trump left South Korea, skipping the main two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, will

that threatened to jam up global supply chains.

Bolstering supply chains is a key focus of 2025’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 due to geopolitical strains.

“Changes unseen in a century are accelerating across the world,” Mr Xi told the assembled leaders at the closed-door opening session on the morning of Oct 31, according to China’s Foreign Ministry.

“The rougher the seas, the more we must pull together,” Mr Xi added, in a speech calling for protection of the multilateral trading system and deeper economic cooperation.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, standing in for Mr Trump, said Washington was “rebalancing its trade relationships to build a stronger foundation for global growth”, according to remarks released by his department.

The International Monetary Fund initially cut the global growth outlook after Mr Trump’s April barrage of trade tariffs, but has edged it back up as shocks and financial conditions have proved more benign than expected.

With the leader of the world's biggest economy absent, attention turns to Mr 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 Oct 31, sources familiar with the matter said.

Before she departed for the summit on Oct 30, Ms Takaichi told reporters that arrangements were under way to meet Mr Xi.

While relations between the historic rivals have been on a sounder footing in recent years, Ms Takaichi's surprise elevation to become

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 focused on defending Japan's islands from an increasingly assertive China.

Japan also hosts the biggest concentration of US 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 Mr Xi at 4pm local time (3pm Singapore time), his office said, aiming to restart broad engagement with China after years of poor relations.

Embroiled in a bitter trade dispute with the United States, Canada’s biggest trading partner, Mr Carney told a gathering of executives running parallel to the main summit on Oct 31 that Ottawa aimed to double its non-US exports over the next decade.

China is Canada’s second-biggest trading partner.

Under the leadership of Mr Carney's predecessor Justin Trudeau, Canadians were detained and executed by the Chinese government and Canada's security authorities concluded that

.

Mr Xi also publicly scolded Mr 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 per cent tariff on imports of Chinese electric vehicles.

Senior officials from both sides met to discuss those issues earlier in October, but gave no indication of any looming breakthrough.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is also due to meet Mr Xi in the afternoon, Bangkok said, fresh from

with neighbouring Cambodia on Oct 26 overseen by Mr Trump.

The US President has repeatedly touted himself as a global peace broker.

Mr Xi told Mr Trump on Oct 30 that China also played a major role in advocating for dialogue and reconciliation on various pressing matters.

“It is clear we cannot always be on the same side, but we must work together to achieve common prosperity,” 2025’s host, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, said in his opening address.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said on Oct 30 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 Nov 1.

“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 Mr Trump's first presidency.

The Apec region, which stretches from Russia to Chile, accounts for 50 per cent of global trade and 61 per cent of gross domestic product.

Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang will be speaking this afternoon to a gathering of executives running parallel to the Apec summit.

Mr Huang has had a whirlwind week, with Nvidia becoming

the issue of the US chipmaker’s sale of advanced artificial intelligence chips in China was seemingly left out of Oct 30's Xi-Trump summit. REUTERS