5 interesting things about APEC Conference

(Baonghean.vn) - The APEC Summit will take place in Da Nang in a few days. Let's learn about interesting things through the APEC conferences.

1. The first APEC conference

APEC was established in November 1989 with 12 founding members: Australia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Therefore, the first conference was held on this occasion in the Australian capital Canberra, with the participation of 12 ministers of the founding countries.

2. First Summit

The first four APEC meetings were attended only by officials at the ministerial and sectoral level. In 1993, the annual meeting was renamed the "APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting" with the participation of the highest authority in each member economy for the first time. This initiative arose from a meeting between then US President Bill Clinton and Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating.

3. First female leader to chair APEC

With New Zealand hosting APEC in 1999, host country Prime Minister Jenny Shipley became the host and chair of important conferences within the APEC framework. In APEC history, she is the first and only woman to undertake these tasks.

4. Leaders attend APEC the most

In the 23 years that the APEC summit has been held (from 1993 to 2016), Russian President Vladimir Putin has attended the most: 11 times. Mr. Putin has held the position of Russian president for a long period, from 2002 to 2008 and from 2012 to present. The two times the Russian president did not attend the APEC summit, but sent the prime minister instead, were in 2002 and 2015.

5. Costs and security forces for APEC events

The amount of money invested in organizing APEC in each country is usually hundreds of millions of USD, of which a relatively large portion is spent on security for senior leaders. For example, the Philippines spent nearly 200 million USD for APEC 2015 while China invested nearly 6 billion USD to organize APEC 2014; Australia spent up to 170 million USD to ensure security for the APEC Summit Week in 2007, more than the security cost of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

Kim Ngoc

(Synthetic)