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GYEONGJU, South Korea: Chinese leader Xi Jinping told Asia-Pacific leaders on Saturday that his country would help to defend global free trade as US President Donald Trump snubbed an annual economic regional forum.
Xi took center stage at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that began the previous day in the South Korean city of Gyeongju, as Trump left the country just hours before the summit opened, after reaching deals with Xi meant to ease their escalating trade war.
This year’s two-day APEC summit has been heavily overshadowed by the Trump-Xi meeting that was arranged on the sidelines.
Trump described his Thursday meeting with Xi as a roaring success, saying he would cut tariffs on China, while Beijing had agreed to allow the export of rare earth elements and start buying American soybeans. Their deals were a relief to a world economy rattled by trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
Trump’s decision to skip APEC fits with his well-known disdain for big, multi-nation forums that have been traditionally used to address huge global problems, but his blunt dismissal of APEC risks worsening America’s reputation at a forum that represents nearly 40 percent of the world’s population and more than half of global goods trade.
Xi defends multilateralism
“The more turbulent the times, the more we must work together,” Xi said during APEC’s opening session. “The world is undergoing a period of rapid change, with the international situation becoming increasingly complex and volatile.”
Xi called for maintaining supply chain stability, in a riposte to US efforts to decouple its supply chains from China.
Xi also expressed hopes to work with other countries to expand cooperation in green industries and clean energy. Chinese exports of its solar panels, electric vehicles and other green tech have been criticized for creating oversupplies and undercutting the domestic industries of countries it exports to.
It’s Xi’s first visit to South Korea in 11 years, and he’s scheduled to meet South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and new Japanese Prime Minister new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi separately on Friday.
APEC faces challenges
Established in 1989 during a period of increased globalization, APEC represents more than half of global trade and champions free and open trade and investment to accelerate regional economic integration. But the APEC region now faces challenges like strategic competitions between the US and China, supply chain vulnerabilities, aging populations and the impact of AI on jobs. The US strategy has been shifted to economic competitions with China rather than cooperation, with Trump’s tariff hikes and “America first” agenda shaking markets and threatening decades of globalization and multinationalism.
Leaders and other representatives from 21 Asian and Pacific Rim economies are attending the APEC meeting to discuss how to promote economic cooperation and tackle shared challenges. Opening the summit as chair, Lee called for greater cooperation and solidarity to overcome new challenges.
“It’s obvious that we can’t always stand on the same side, as our national interests are at stake. But we can join together for the ultimate goal of shared prosperity,” Lee said. “I hope we will have candid and constructive discussions on how we can achieve APEC’s vision in the face of the new challenge of a rapidly changing international economic environment.”
Despite Trump’s optimism after a 100-minute meeting with Xi, there continues to be the potential for major tensions between the countries, with both seeking dominant places in manufacturing and developing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
“It is certainly a contribution to bring the leaders of the two largest economies together for a meeting where they agreed to withdraw their most extreme tariff and export control threats. As a result, worst-case outcomes for global trade were averted,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
“However, APEC is meant to be more than a venue for a trade war truce,” Easley said. “Greater multilateral efforts are needed to address the region’s most pressing economic challenges, including resisting costly and destabilizing protectionism, harmonizing regulations for sustainable trade, and coordinating standards for digital innovation.”
Host South Korea pushes for joint statement
South Korean officials said they’ve been communicating with other countries to prod all 21 members to adopt a joint statement at the end of the summit so as not to repeat the failure to issue one in 2018 in Papua New Guinea due to US-China discord over trade.
South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said last week that issuing a joint statement strongly endorsing free trade would be unlikely because of differing positions among APEC members. He instead anticipated a broader declaration emphasizing peace and prosperity in the region.
As host nation, South Korea places a priority on discussing AI cooperation and demographic challenges such as aging population and low birth rates, under the theme “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow: Connect, Innovate, Prosper.” South Korean officials say APEC members will share exemplary cases of responses to AI and demographic issues, explore common steps and formulate new growth strategies during this week’s summit.

LUJAN: Lions, tigers and bears that managed to survive in substandard conditions at a now-shuttered zoo on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, paced weakly in their claustrophobic cages on Thursday, waiting their turn to receive urgent veterinary care for the first time in years.
The 62 big cats and two brown bears were being evaluated and treated before their eventual transfer to vast wildlife sanctuaries abroad — among the most complex animal rescues undertaken in Argentina after the country’s recent arrangement with an international animal welfare organization.
Argentine authorities in 2020 shut down the Lujan Zoo — famous for letting visitors handle and pose for pictures with tigers and lions — over mounting safety concerns.
But the plight of the captive cats there only worsened. For the past five years, the animals were sustained by little more than a few loyal zookeepers who, despite having lost their jobs at Lujan, took it upon themselves to feed and care for the stranded lions and tigers left behind.
Most didn’t make it.
When Four Paws, an animal rights charity, first visited the zoo in 2023, caretakers counted 112 lions and tigers — already down from the 136 big cats housed in the zoo at the time of its closure.
Two years on, almost half of the animals have succumbed to illnesses from poor nutrition, wounds from fights with animals they’d never encounter in the wild, infections from lack of medical attention and organ failure from the stress of living in such cramped conditions.
“It was really shocking,” said the organization’s chief program officer, Luciana D’Abramo, pointing to a 3-square-meter (10-square-foot) cage crammed with seven female lions. “Overcrowded is an understatement.”
Next-door, two Asian tigers shared a tiny cage with two African lions — a “social composition that would never be found in nature,” D’Abramo said. “There’s a lot of hostility, fighting.”
A single lion typically gets 1 hectare (2.5 acres) to itself at Four Paws’ sanctuaries around the world.
After striking an agreement with Argentina’s government earlier this year, Four Paws took over responsibility for the surviving wild animals in Lujan last month.
The memorandum of understanding involved Argentina committing to end the sale and private ownership of exotic felines in the large South American country, where enforcement efforts often run aground across 23 provinces that have their own rules and regulations.
Although the Vienna-based organization has previously evacuated starving tigers from Syria’s civil war, abandoned bears and hyenas from the war-ravaged Iraqi city of Mosul and neglected lion cubs from the besieged Gaza Strip, it has never rescued such a large number of big cats before.
“Here, the number of animals and the conditions where they are kept make this a much bigger challenge,” said Dr. Amir Khalil, the veterinarian leading the group’s emergency mission. “This is one of our biggest missions ... not only in Argentina or Latin America, but worldwide.”
On Thursday, veterinarians and experts from the organization were scrambling around the derelict zoo to assess the animals one by one. Most had not been vaccinated, sterilized or microchipped for identification.
The team whisked sedated lions and tigers onto operating tables, dispensing nutrients, antibiotics and doses of pain medication via IV drips.
The quick checkups frequently transformed into emergency surgeries. One tiger was treated for a bleeding gash in its tail last week and a lioness for a vaginal tumor on Thursday. Several tigers and lions needed root canals to repair infected molars that had been broken on the steel cage bars.
Others received treatment for claws that had grown inward from walking too much on unnatural, plank flooring in the spartan enclosures.
After evaluating each animal in the coming weeks, Four Paws will arrange for their transfer to more expansive, natural homes around the world.
Some Argentine zookeepers who spent decades feeding and caring for the big cats say they’re happy to see Four Paws improving the conditions. But there was also a sense of nostalgia for how things were.
“It used to be a very popular place ... I’ve seen people cry because they could touch a lion or feed a tiger with a bottle,” said Alberto Díaz, who spent 27 years working with the wild cats at the Lujan Zoo, overseeing hands-on experiences that catered to countless tourists.
“Time changes, laws change, and you have to adapt or get left behind.”