[2025 APEC Summit framed its] agenda around three priorities—namely, Connect, Innovate, Prosper—a structure that mirrors the region’s core dilemmas.
The 2025 APEC Leaders’ Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, was more than a routine diplomatic gathering. It was a moment of reckoning for the Asia-Pacific, a region that has long powered global growth but now faces converging headwinds, including slowing trade, aging populations, and the disruptive force of artificial intelligence.
The Gyeongju Declaration, adopted on November 1, 2025, seeks to chart a course through this uncertainty. Its ambitions are lofty; its success will depend on whether member economies can translate words into coordinated action.
Under the theme “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow,” leaders reaffirmed APEC’s relevance as a forum for economic cooperation at a time when multilateralism is under strain. They framed their agenda around three priorities—namely, Connect, Innovate, Prosper—a structure that mirrors the region’s core dilemmas. How can economies stay interconnected in a fragmented world? How can innovation be made inclusive rather than destabilizing? And how can prosperity be shared amid widening inequalities?
The declaration’s first pillar, Connect, leans on familiar but vital themes: free and open trade, resilient supply chains, and quality infrastructure. With the global trading system still reeling from geopolitical frictions, APEC’s reaffirmation of market openness is a necessary signal. The renewed push toward the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) may revive regional integration after years of drift.
But the real innovation lies in the attention to digital trade, including paperless systems, AI-enabled customs and micro-enterprise access to cross-border e-commerce. If realized, these measures could turn trade facilitation into a powerful equalizer for smaller economies.
Where Connect emphasizes continuity, Innovate captures transformation. The endorsement of the new APEC AI Initiative marks a pivotal moment. It acknowledges that artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept but an immediate economic force. The initiative’s focus on responsible, human-centered AI offers a counterweight to the unregulated race that often defines the tech world.
Yet the challenge of bridging the digital divide that still separates advanced economies from developing ones remains enormous. Without coordinated investment in education, digital literacy and infrastructure, AI’s benefits will remain unevenly distributed, widening the very gaps APEC seeks to close.
The third pillar, Prosper, broadens APEC’s lens beyond growth to inclusion. Leaders pledged to empower small and medium-sized enterprises, tackle demographic shifts, and enhance energy and food security. The newly endorsed Collaborative Framework for Demographic Changes recognizes that aging and urbanization are reshaping the region’s workforce and productivity. Although it is a forward-looking agenda, it will require national policies to match regional rhetoric.
Energy cooperation is another test. With electricity demand surging, APEC’s call to diversify energy sources and modernize grids is timely. Recognizing natural gas and renewables as complementary solutions shows pragmatic balance. Yet the declaration’s real innovation is its embrace of AI for energy management, an area where technology and sustainability intersect most clearly.
The same logic extends to health and climate resilience. By linking digital health and AI to improved patient care and early diagnosis, the declaration situates technology at the heart of human security. The emphasis on disaster preparedness and food security likewise reflects lessons from recent shocks.
Still, the Gyeongju Declaration’s greatest value may lie in what it symbolizes, namely, a reaffirmation that cooperation in the Asia-Pacific is not obsolete. In an era of rising nationalism, APEC remains one of the few forums where economies as diverse as the United States, China, Japan and developing Pacific nations can find common ground. Its consensual and non-binding structure is often criticized as weak, but that same flexibility has allowed it to endure.
The task now is to ensure that the commitments made in Gyeongju do not fade into the diplomatic archives. Each initiative, from AI governance to demographic resilience, must evolve from discussion paper to implementation plan. For APEC to remain the region’s “incubator of ideas,” those ideas must produce results visible to citizens, not just policymakers.
Gyeongju was a beginning, not an end. The true test of APEC’s vitality will come in whether its members can move beyond declarations to decisive and collective action. If they do, the promise of a “sustainable tomorrow” might yet become the Asia-Pacific’s most valuable export.
Bahauddin Foizee is an analyst & columnist focusing on the assessment of threat/risk associated with business, economy and investment as well as legal, security, political and geopolitical threat/risk. His articles on these areas as well as on social, environmental, financial and military affairs in the Asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific and Middle East regions have been widely published.
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