Full coverage: Xi Visits Ecuador, Peru and Chile, Attends APEC Summit

For more on the APEC meeting, we spoke with Stewart Beck, president and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. He is known as one of the three advisors of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau regarding Asia-Pacific policy. Beck expressed his worries about the surge of trade protectionism and his expectation to see China play a more essential role in the economic and trade cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.

"I think China's role is becoming more and more important. It's always been important because it's always been such a large economy, certainly since the beginnings of APEC. But as you see, that growth and the strength of trying to increase, the role that they now, in terms of influencing the movement of goods in the region, the regulations, the ability for free trade, if you take a look at FTAs as an example and RCEP, China is really becoming an important country in building that dialogue around free trade, and that's I think important, particularly today, when you have economies that are talking more about protectionism than about free trade," Stewart Beck said.