Asia-Pacific leaders recently met in Beijing at the annual APEC summit, and after two days of discussion, concluded with some significant pledges and remarkable moments. President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan held a landmark meeting, and the United States and China discussed two agreements that are both symbolic, and lay groundwork for regional progress, say Stanford scholars.

High-level intergovernmental meetings are often more theatre than substance, but this year the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the oldest trans-Pacific regional organization, delivered important messages and may spur actions by member governments.

“Any summit is a ‘hurry up, get this done’ motivator,” says Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “The head of state goes to the meeting – and generally speaking – he doesn’t want to arrive and say ‘my guys were asleep for the last year.’”

Fingar says the APEC summit prodded countries to work on “deliverables,” particularly the goals and projects on the agenda from previous meetings. He recently returned from Beijing, and shared his perspectives with students in the Asia-Pacific Scholars Program.

Writing for the East Asia Forum, Donald Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said many of the commitments declared at the APEC summit, and at the subsequent meetings of the G20 in Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Myanmar, will have implications for global governance, particularly as China holds a more influential role in the region.

APEC countries account for over 40 percent of the world’s population and nearly half of global trade – and true to form, the grand vision of the summit is to advance regional economic integration.

Yet, “the ancillary things – things that went on in the margins – are in many ways more important,” Fingar says, referring to areas outside of the summit’s obvious focus, and what’s discussed on the sidelines of the public talks.

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Key outcomes from the 2014 gathering include:

• The leaders of Japan and China met for the first time since coming into office, afterward acknowledging that the two countries have “disagreements” in their official statements. Of the Xi-Abe meeting, Fingar says, “it helps clear the way for lower level bureaucrats to go to work on real issues."

• The United States and China announced a proposal to extend visas for students and businesspeople on both sides. While the immediate effects would be helpful, the change is symbolically superior. “You don’t give 5-10 year visas to adversaries,” he says, it shows that “‘we’re in [the relationship] for the long-term.’”

• China proposed the development of a new “Silk Road,” pledging $40 billion in resources toward infrastructure projects shared with South and Central Asian neighbors. “It’s tying the region together and creating economy-of-scale possibilities for other countries,” he says. “A real win-win situation.”

• The United States and China, the world’s two largest energy consumers, announced bilateral plans to cut carbon emissions over the next two decades. “It’s significant because those two countries must be the ones to lead the world in this area. Unless we are seen to be in basic agreement, others will hold back.”

• China codified the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a global financial institution intended as an alternative to institutions like the World Bank. “China has been frustrated with its role in existing international institutions,” Fingar says, explaining a likely motivation behind the AIIB’s creation.

Emmerson said the outcomes of the APEC summit from the U.S.-China standpoint were better than expected, speaking to McClatchy News. The visa and climate deals, as well as their commitment to lowering global tariffs on IT products, will lessen chances of conflict between the two countries. 

However, the summit did leave some areas unsolved. One of the most important is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade pact proposed by the United States that includes 11 others countries in the region, but does not yet include China.

Leaders “made positive noises” coming out of the TPP discussions, Fingar says, but nothing was passed. The gravity and complexity of trade-related issues, especially agriculture and intellectual property, is likely to blame for slow action.

Recently, North Korea suddenly released the two remaining Americans it was holding – Kennth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller. The news made headlines internationally, and the drama of it was heightened because the United States’ top spy flew into Pyongyang and secured their release. Not surprisingly, the event raised many questions and is prompting a great deal speculation. Why did North Korea release the Americans? Why choose the U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper to receive the handover? And, especially, what are the implications for the troubling situation on the Korean Peninsula?

David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, has had direct experience with similar situations. In 2009, he accompanied former U.S. President Bill Clinton on a mission to Pyongyang to bring home two incarcerated American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee. As the State Department’s Korean affairs deputy director (1996-98) and director (2002-04), he was involved in efforts to obtain the release of a number of other Americans held in North Korea. Here, Straub offers his analysis of the recent event.

Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 15 years in prison and had already been held nearly two years when he was released on Saturday, while Matthew Todd Miller was arrested in April of this year and subsequently sentenced to six years in prison. Why did you think North Korea suddenly returned them?

The surprise is not that they were released. The North Koreans have returned every American they have held during the past few decades. While some Americans have been arrested for reasons that the North Koreans themselves might have thought valid, such as the charge that Bae was seeking to bring down the regime by his Christian proselytization, in every case the North Koreans treated the Americans as pawns. In fact, in the case of these two Americans and of Jeffrey Fowle, the third incarcerated American who was released last month, the U.S. government actually publicly used the word “pawns” for the first time to describe the way Pyongyang was using them. While that risked angering the North Koreans and delaying the releases, it reflected increasing American frustration at the North Korean practice of holding American citizens hostage to force the U.S. government to send senior figures to be seen as pleading for their release. North Korea intended to release Bae all along—after it got as much as it could of what it wanted.

But why did Pyongyang release the Americans at this particular time?

The reasons for that remain unclear. Many observers have speculated that the North Koreans wanted to ease U.S. and U.N. criticism of their human rights situation. The U.N. General Assembly will soon consider a measure, based on a damning U.N. investigative report, to hold top North Korean officials accountable for crimes against humanity due to the way they treat their own people. Others have speculated that the North Koreans wanted to release the Americans before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this week in Beijing, to make it easier for Chinese President Xi Jinping to press President Obama to agree to return to the Chinese-led Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. Both of these are plausible but they are speculation –only North Korean leaders really know.

But there is also an American angle to the timing. All along, the North Koreans have been demanding that the United States send a very senior current U.S. official to receive the release of incarcerated Americans. In the past, these roles have been performed by both very senior former U.S. officials, such as Presidents Carter and Clinton, and current but relatively low-ranking American officials, such as Ambassador Robert King, the United States’ special envoy for North Korean human rights issues. Almost from the start in this case, the U.S. was prepared to send Ambassador King but the North Koreans rejected him as being too junior. Instead, the North Koreans demanded a very senior sitting U.S. official come; they stuck with that demand and ultimately were successful. After a long process of negotiations and signaling, the two sides very recently agreed that National Intelligence Director Clapper would be appropriate. U.S. officials have publicly suggested that they were the ones who nominated Clapper. They say that the choice of this non-diplomat was intended to underline to all concerned that the sole purpose was to obtain the release of the remaining Americans. I am convinced that that was in fact the case. The U.S. government is naturally loath to talk substance with the North Koreans in a situation such as this when it is in fact acting under duress.

Then why didn’t the United States send Director Clapper sooner?

The United States does not want to encourage the North Korean leaders to think that they can coerce the United States by taking American citizens hostages. That might only result in more such hostage-taking. U.S. officials thus held firm for a long time and decided to send Mr. Clapper only when they concluded there was no better way to obtain the release of our citizens. U.S. officials have suggested that the North Koreans sent a signal a few weeks ago that triggered this particular decision, but exactly what was behind this exact timing remains to be disclosed.

Does the dispatch of someone as senior as Clapper increase the likelihood of more hostage-taking?

Unfortunately, it may. From a North Korean perspective, they got their basic demand—for a very senior sitting official—and it was the Americans who blinked. They also got a letter from President Obama to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even if it was only “brief” and just certified that Clapper was his envoy for the purpose of retrieving the Americans. The North Koreans claim that President Obama “earnestly apologized”; the U.S. government has flatly denied making any apology. I’m sure U.S. officials weighed the concern about encouraging the North Koreans in further misbehavior against their desire to return Bae and Miller. Bae in particular had been held longer than any other American so far and he has a number of health issues. In response to the recent spate of hostage-taking, last year the State Department, for the first time, strongly warned Americans against all travel to North Korea. After the release of Bae and Miller, U.S. officials reiterated that warning.

You said that the North Koreans do this to force senior Americans to be seen as pleading for the release of incarcerated Americans. Do the North Koreans really go to so much trouble only for that?

Some observers say that the North Koreans do this because the United States refuses to talk and negotiate with them and that this is their desperate effort to try to negotiate and seek better relations with the United States. I’m afraid that is very much wishful thinking. The United States and North Korea actually communicate directly through North Korean diplomats assigned to U.N. headquarters in New York, as a North Korean ambassador there recently confirmed in an interview with Voice of America. The United States is also prepared to negotiate with North Korea, but only if it credibly signals that it is willing to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program. North Korea’s current stated position is that it is ready to return “unconditionally” to the Six Party Talks, but that is transparently cynical. The North Koreans have already created conditions, by using the Six Party Talks as a cover to achieve a nuclear weapons breakthrough. The North Korean now seriously say that they will not give up nuclear weapons until the United States gives up its own. Under such conditions, it would be a farce for the United States to agree to a resumption of Six Party Talks.

After accompanying President Clinton to North Korea in 2009, including sitting in on his meeting with its previous ruler, Kim Jong Il, I was even more puzzled as to why the North Koreans would go to so much trouble to force senior Americans to come to retrieve incarcerated American citizens. After much reflection, my working hypothesis is that the North Koreans must get great psychological satisfaction from forcing the U.S. government to bend to their will, even if they get nothing substantive in return—even if, in fact, they only increase the American disinclination to deal with them otherwise. In some cases, such as President Clinton’s visit, they also propagandize the event to their own people. So far, they have not yet reported to their people on Clapper’s visit. It will be interesting to see if they do.

A couple of quick final questions: do you think, as some media have suggested, that the Chinese government or private citizens played a role as intermediaries in the release of the Americans? And do you give any credence to some South Korean commentators’ belief that the timing of the release was related to the American mid-term elections?

It’s amazing to see all the people who come out of the woodwork after such an event, claiming to have played a role. Even Dennis Rodman is now saying he helped by sending a letter to Kim Jong Un. I know that many private citizens talked with North Korea officials about these cases and I would imagine that the Chinese government also urged Pyongyang to do the right thing, but I am confident that it was talks American and North Korean officials held that resulted in the release. As for speculation about the timing being connected to the American elections, that’s a common misperception in South Korea and probably North Korea as well. As any American knows, the idea that obtaining the release of these Americans from North Korea would somehow help the Democrats in the election is of course ludicrous.

David Straub also spoke with Radio Free Asia about the release of the American prisoners from North Korea. He says the release has nothing to do with North Korea's nuclear initiative, saying that issue must be addressed on its own merits. The article is in the Korean language and can be accessed by clicking here.

On 10 Nov. 2014 a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will convene in Beijing, followed in rapid succession by the East Asia Summit in Naypyidaw and the G20 in Brisbane.

Much of what will be said and done at these events will implicate the tectonics of nascent global governance set in motion by China’s campaign for greater influence in Asia.

At the APEC summit, Chinese president Xi Jinping will stress the need for massive spending on infrastructure in Asia. He will tout China’s sponsorship of a Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that would operate outside of, and potentially compete with, the American-led World Bank and the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank (ABD).

Many will welcome the AIIB as evidence of China’s willingness to assume responsibility for public goods in a rebalanced post-Cold War world whose needs exceed the resources of existing global institutions. But will ‘public’ goods benefit the public if their terms are not made public? In 2014 China ranked 68th of 68 donors in the Aid Transparency Index compared with the 5th-place ADB and the 7th-place World Bank. Given the commercial importance of cyberspace, it is also concerning that China is the worst violator of the rights of internet users in the latest Freedom House ranking of 60 countries on that variable.

In the ADB as of 2013, Tokyo held respective 16 and 13 per cent shares of subscribed capital and voting power. Understandably, at the AIIB’s inception, Beijing’s shares will be far larger. But how soon and by how much will China allow its initial dominance to be diluted by other contributing members? Concerns over Beijing’s intentions may already underlie the wait-and-see attitudes of Tokyo, Seoul, and Canberra as to whether to join the new bank.

Another alternative to international lending by traditional sources is the New Development Bank (NDB) recently innovated by the BRICS. Headquartered in Shanghai, it will be led first by an Indian.

In the formal sessions of APEC, lip service will be paid to its hopes for free and open trade and investment worldwide by 2020. But in the corridors delegates will debate whether China’s AIIB and the BRICS’s NDB will further ‘responsible stakeholding’ and shared governance by emerging states in a global economy no longer centred on the West. Some may fear that Xi wants to use these new institutions to tie Asia more tightly and deferentially to Beijing in a web of ‘Silk Roads’ that will disproportionally serve Chinese interests.

China’s ambitions will also be questioned at the East Asia Summit in Myanmar, especially regarding the South China Sea (SCS). China will again be asked to clarify its generously self-serving U-shaped line: Does Beijing really want to possess or control nearly all of that body of water? Southeast Asians will again urge China to implement the Document on Conduct (DOC) in the South China Sea that it signed with all ten members of ASEAN in 2002. China will again be implored to accept a future Code of Conduct (COC) regulating state behaviour in the SCS. But Beijing will likely continue to delay and demur, while ASEAN’s historic centrality to Asian region-formation continues to diminish.

It is symbolic of ASEAN’s plight that the group has been too divided to express more than ‘serious concern’ over ‘developments’ in the SCS — untethered abstractions that leave China happily uncharged. In ASEAN’s field of vision, the COC has become an entrenched mirage. Calls for a code are repetitively embedded in ASEAN’s communiqués because it is one of the few things the members can agree should happen. Thanks to Chinese foot-dragging, however, the goal keeps receding and Beijing keeps doing whatever it wants to in the SCS.

Chinese activity now includes a unilateral land-reclaiming and construction work at the specks that China already controls — actions that violate the spirit if not the letter of the DOC.

Some US$5.3 trillion in goods are shipped annually across the SCS, including US$1.2 trillion to or from the United States. China has unilaterally declared and begun to enforce a monopoly on fishing in more than half of the SCS. If multilaterally negotiated limitations are being flouted or forestalled in this key regional instance, how much confidence can one have that Xi will cooperate in Asia on behalf of a rules-based order at the global level?

None of this means denying the overdue need to restructure existing institutions to accommodate the voices and priorities of rising powers. But time is running out. Convincingly dire warnings in the just-released UN report on climate change render existential the need for concerted global action. Nationalism and nationalistic regionalism — by Beijing, Moscow or Washington — must not derail progress toward the constructive rebalancing and sharing of global governance. Shifting power to emerging actors should facilitate not frustrate that process. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of one wall in Berlin should not be spent building another in Asia.

This article was originally carried by the East Asia Forum on Nov. 7 and reposted with permission.