Chinese President Xi Jinping has come to South America with a multi-billion-dollar charm offensive aimed at winning favour with nations, as Donald Trump threatens to isolate the United States from the global community.
After touching down in Peru for the two-day APEC summit, Mr Xi opened a Chinese-controlled Pacific megaport north of the capital Lima.
Mr Xi, like outgoing US president Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, are spending a week in Latin America for meetings with Pacific-rim nations in Peru and the world's largest economies in Brazil.
Mr Trump's threat to ignite global trade wars has China seeking to capitalise, particularly in nations that might have previously looked north to the United States for economic support.
The prospect of economic warfare between Australia's largest trading partner, China, and its closest defence ally, the US, has Mr Albanese calling for calm.
Addressing a private session of APEC leaders on Friday, local time, he will say now is not the time to pull back from the global community.
"In our interconnected global economy, distance is no barrier to this uncertainty and isolation is no answer," he will say.
"We are all affected, we are all involved. And so we must all work together to meet this present adversity in a way that builds for our future prosperity."
Even without Mr Trump attending the South American summits, his looming return to the White House is continuing to dominate discussions among leaders.
Mr Albanese met with Indonesia's new president, Prabowo Subianto, on Thursday where the two leaders discussed their joint desire for greater trade and military cooperation.
Before reporters were ushered out of the room, Mr Prabowo warned of the need to work together to get China to "de-escalate" and lower the temperature in the Pacific.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will call for cooperation in a speech to world leaders at APEC. (Flickr: APEC Perú)
The prime minister's address to APEC leaders will mark the start of two days of meetings, which will focus on trade and the global effort to tackle inflation. Leaders will also discuss the energy crisis that has been exacerbated thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Albanese will condemn Russia and the support it's receiving from North Korea. He will also repeat his calls for a de-escalation of violence in the Middle East.
He will argue that all combined reaffirmed the need for global leaders to work closer, not further apart.
"Co-operation is fundamental to meeting the challenges confronting us," he will say.
"It is every bit as important to seizing the opportunities ahead of us."
Since arriving in Peru, Mr Albanese has repeatedly said he supported "free and fair" trade and the need to maintain climate targets, both for the environment and domestic jobs.
"There are hundreds of millions of people who stand to benefit from the work we can do to modernise and strengthen trade rules," he will tell APEC's leaders.
The prime minister addressed business leaders at a lavish function that overlooked the South Pacific in Lima on Thursday night.
He pitched Australia as a safe and reliable partner, a country ready to benefit from the billions that could flow to other countries if Mr Trump follows through on his threat to junk US clean energy subsidies and funding.
Mr Albanese talked up Australia as being rich in the resources needed to supply the world with clean energy and battery technology.
China's president will meet with outgoing US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the APEC meeting on Saturday. Mr Albanese appears optimistic about securing a meeting with Mr Xi on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro in the coming days.
The prime minister's comments in South America have offered an insight into how he is likely to deal with Mr Trump when he is back in the White House.
He has been at pains not to appear disparaging of the man he once dubbed as scaring the "shit out of me".
Mr Albanese has talked of the need to wait and see what Mr Trump does in office and has repeated his willingness to work with the US president.
But he's not shied away from any of his trade or climate policies that are at odds with Mr Trump's rhetoric.
Having never met Mr Trump, the Coalition has urged him to visit the incoming president in Florida while in the Americas. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr Albanese all but ruled that out, insisting he would be back in parliament the day after the G20 conference ends.