BEIJING (Nov 8): Asian trade and foreign-affairs ministers meeting in Beijing this week agreed to start a two-year study on the implementation of a regional free-trade agreement advocated by China.

China has promoted the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific agreement as a way to bolster commerce across a group of nations that includes the world’s three largest economies.

Results of the study are to be reported by the end of 2016 to ministers from the US, China, Japan and other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, according to a joint statement issued today.

The US has pushed for a separate regional trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which doesn’t currently include China, highlighting competition between the world’s two largest economies for influence in Asia.

The annual APEC meetings, being held in Beijing through Nov 11, aren’t an appropriate forum to discuss the TPP pact, Wang Shouwen, an assistant Chinese commerce minister, told a Nov 4 briefing.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in Beijing today that her country supports the FTAAP. “We don’t see it as mutually exclusive to other arrangements,” she told reporters.

When asked about the FTAAP at a briefing in Beijing today, WTO Secretary-General Roberto Azevedo said his organization regards “any move toward trade liberalization and against protectionism a good move”.

In their joint statement, the APEC ministers said they’d agreed to establish the FTAAP “as early as possible”, without giving a time frame.