| Economic globalization and regional economic integration are among the major topics in the current process of world economic development. More and more nations are taking part in the different economic organizations engaged in regional cooperation while getting involved in the multilateral trading system. Founded in 1989, the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has been one of the most important economic forums in the Asian Pacific region. The aggregated value of gross domestic product of the 21 APEC economies accounts for about half of that of the total in the whole world, thus making APEC as a whole the most powerful regional economic organization over the world. APEC has so far made some positive progress in the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment as well as in the economic and technical cooperation. The annually-held APEC leaders' informal summit meeting has become the focus of worldwide attention and exerted a far-reaching effect on the regional cooperation.This paper gives a brief analysis on the origin and the development course of APEC and explores the main contents and characteristics of "APEC approach", the unique and brand-new regional cooperative mode, taking the considerations of the following three aspects:The first is the respective basic points of and a comparison between APEC and other major regional economic organizations (i.e. EuropeanUnion- EU, North American Free Trade Area - NAFTA). With relativelysolid basis and high levels for cooperation as well as through the establishment of an economic and monetary union , EU is characterized of high degrees of institutionalization and closeness; NAFTA does not aim at setting up a custom union with common tariff barriers for non-member nations, but rather a free trade zone, advocating free trade in line with the basic principles of WTO, But it limits non-member economies to enter into the North American market by rules of origin. By and large, NAFTA is less institutionalized and less closed than EU. APEC is quite different from EU and NAFTA in its openness of cooperative results and looseness of institutional structure, which represents a brand-new model in regional economic integration.Secondly, APEC is compared with WTO, the multilateral trading system. In terms of objectives and basic principles, APEC is in the same line with WTO, but not so in the respects of institutional structure and functionalmechanism. Both are very much interactive. APEC has made contributions to the advancement of WTO, while WTO has also enhanced the progress of APEC.Thirdly, How is APEC getting along with its sub-regional economic cooperation agreements or organizations? And what is the relationship between them? In recent years, the sub-regional economic organizations or relevant mechanisms have been growing rapidly and in a large scale within APEC economies, such as "10 plus 3" and "10 plus 1", etc.. The most influential sub-regional mechanisms include NAFTA, Australian-New Zealand Agreement of Close Economic Relations (CER) and ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). The relations between APEC and its sub-regional mechanisms is just to a certain extent like that between economic globalization and regional economic integration: they are mutually complementary and also compete each other in some way, not necessarily in a position of replacing each other. Sub-regional mechanisms exert dual impact on APEC, which is both actively promotional and passively obstructive. In view of the extent of openness, different sub-regional mechanisms give impact on APEC by different extent.As an initiative of cooperative system, APEC, with its unique operational model, has unattainable advantages over other regional cooperative organizations. Nevertheless, APEC has its own shortcomings or disadvantages. APEC is confronting the following challenges: It lacks an effective mechanism for implementing actions to be carried out by member economies; it hasn't achieved remarkable results in economic and technical cooperation as that in the liberalization...
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