China's two-pronged Silk Road initiative, including overland and maritime linkages, has won accolades from leaders across Asia.  China is keener on fostering economic cooperation than building strategic alliances.

Xi Jinping put forward requirements on expanding and broadening the agenda of China's diplomatic strategy under new conditions.  "We should manage well relations with other major countries, build a sound and stable framework of major-country relations, and expand cooperation with other major developing countries," Xi said.

Weeks before the summit, environment unfriendly industries within Beijing and the adjacent regions were suspended as required to reproduce the long lost blue sky and as short as the APEC meeting, the blueness was gone with the closure of the summit.

The frosty handshake between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing is providing an opportunity for the two countries to end the downward spiral of the last two years, but this is by no means assured. Both sides had their respective domestic audiences in mind at the historic meeting.