MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. The US will probably try to temper down its tensions with China at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, an analyst told TASS.
Another analyst said Russia could use the conference to highlight the resilience of its economy.
The event in San Francisco will not change anything for Russian-US relations, said Dmitry Suslov, a deputy director at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
"The Russian issue is not one of the main issues of this summit. The main issue is the US and China. The US is the host of this year's summit, and we realize that they are our main strategic adversary, waging a hybrid war against Russia. I do not think that this summit will change anything for Russia," the analyst said.
Suslov said the highlight of the APEC summit will be the meeting of US and Chinese leaders, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. He said the purpose of this meeting is to end the escalation of the confrontation between the countries, which is something both sides are interested in.
"Even as both sides realize that further escalation of the confrontation is inevitable, here and now neither side is interested in stepping up this confrontation because the US has presidential elections next year, and things will get hectic. Besides, both the US and Chinese economies are not doing that well. As such, neither China, nor the US is interested in escalating the confrontation," the analyst stated.
Suslov insisted that Russia's representation at the summit is appropriate, given that the US again abused the it rights as the summit host.
"The United States said that it will be guided by sanctions in its policy on this issue. This ruled out the participation of the president, the foreign minister, the prime minister. These are the current realities," he said.
Resilient Russia
Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University, told TASS that the level of Russia’s representation at the summit will not prevent it from advancing its agenda.
"Strictly speaking, APEC has always been a platform for discussion, not a place where decisions are made. In recent times, APEC, as a forum, brought together those who wanted to talk to each other, providing a convenient platform. Therefore, the lack of a full representation will not worsen the Russian situation in any way," the analyst said.
"The most important thing for Russia is to show how resilient its position is now. It will use this event to show its sustainable development goals for the next few years and to communicate that the Russian economy is by no means problematic," Maslov said. "Moscow's task is to demonstrate that a number of problems that have now arisen are not leading to the collapse of individual economies, but to the creation of new economic allies and models of relations, such as Russia-China or Russia-Asia."
The analyst said he is confident that Washington will continue to advance the anti-China agenda at the summit, but one of the main questions is how harshly the US will be able to criticize China. In this sense, the US administration is coming to the table with fairly limited resources.
"The recent anti-China sanctions have hit China quite painfully, but have prompted a rapid transformation of the Chinese economy, especially in the high-tech sector. So in this respect, there are not so many options for the US to continue economic pressure on China. Beijing will now be quite tough in defending of its decisions from the perspective of economic development," Maslov said.
Russia’s delegation to APEC
The APEC summit is taking place in San Francisco from November 15-17. The Russian delegation will be led by Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk. At the previous APEC summit in Thailand, Russia was represented by First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov.