Chinese think tanks are split in their views on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade initiative proposed by U.S. President Barack Obama at the APEC summit in Hawaii this month. Zhang Yunling of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said that “sooner or later, China will have to join the TPP”, adding that it may take time for China to meet standards on government procurement, state-run enterprises and labor rights. The mainstream opinion from Chinese researchers, Zhang told a policy briefing session, is that the country will become a TPP member at some point. Liu Youfa, Vice President of the China Institute of International Studies said that as long as the TPP practiced transparency and inclusiveness and did not discriminate against China or any other country, China could join it at any time. He said the Asia-Pacific region was a much more diverse region than Europe and that for any Asia-Pacific multilateral mechanism to work, it had to be more tolerant of differences between countries. The nine countries already involved in TPP talks are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile and Peru. China’s participation would depend primarily on talks with the U.S. and Japan, the two largest economies in the partnership. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit in Honolulu, China did not express immediate interest in joining the talks, even though President Hu Jintao said that China remained committed to its long-term goal of an Asia-Pacific free-trade area including all 21 APEC members. Many researchers said the best approach for Beijing to adopt was to wait and see, although many antagonistic views were expressed by Chinese researchers right after the U.S. proposed the TPP. Mei Xinyu, Research Fellow with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a Ministry of Commerce think tank, said that if the TPP followed rules laid down by the U.S., they would include things that China saw as its own internal affairs, such as fighting corruption and monopolies, environmental regulations and product standards, the South China Morning Post reports.