Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has landed in Bangkok for the final meeting of world leaders in a week of global summits, now overshadowed by the war in Ukraine.

“Everyone recognises that greater tension, greater conflict in our region is good for no-one,” Ardern said, before travelling to Thailand from Vietnam on Thursday.

“I don't think we can underestimate the impact and difference it makes just to see people face-to-face ... I believe it’s making a difference.”

The leaders of the 21 countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) are meeting in Bangkok from Friday , the first in-person meeting for the forum since 2018.

New Zealand hosted Apec virtually in 2021, after the fast escalating pandemic had disrupted Malaysia’s 2020 event, Chile’s 2019 leaders’ summit was cancelled due to domestic protests, and in Papua New Guinea in 2018 the leaders couldn’t agree on a final statement as the United States and China openly bickered over trade.

The Apec meeting will be the end-note on a high-stakes week of leaders’ summits in Southeast Asia. At the weekend, world leaders including Ardern assembled in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the East Asia Summit, and in the days since leaders of the world’s most powerful economies – the G20 – met in Bali, Indonesia.

There have been moments of overt tension, as many leaders meet face-to-face for the first time after years of building tensions and global stress. But it has also yielded results.

War in Ukraine looms large

The war in Ukraine was always going to loom over the Apec summit, but a missile crashing into Poland, killing two, all but cemented it would be top of the agenda.

Nato members at the G20 summit were led into an emergency meeting by US President Joe Biden, and Nato leaders, including Poland's, met the stray missile with caution – assessing the incident as an Ukraine air defence missile gone awry.

Ardern said it was "difficult to say” whether the incident in Poland would dominate the Apec summit.

While Apec was ostensibly an economic forum, Ardern said geostrategic issues were “heavily” impacting economies so would "weigh heavily on the summit”.

That Russia might not have fired the missile "doesn't change the underlying position, though, that the war itself is the cause of these discussions in the first place”.

Russia, also an Apec member, has become an outlier at this week's summits, as China's support for its warring friend appears to reach its limit.

While leaders failed to reach consensus and produce a leaders’ statement at the East Asia Summit earlier this week, the G20 leaders did.

“Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy ," a statement issued by the leaders afterward read.

“There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.”

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov​ accused Western countries of trying to “politicise” the joint statement, according to Reuters. China issued a post-summit statement saying “unilateral sanctions” – such as those placed on Russia by countries including New Zealand – “should be removed”.

Another moment of tension was also captured on film. China's leader Xi Jinping publicly confronted Canada’s President Justin Trudeau after details of the pair's bilateral meeting were leaked to the Canadian press.

“Everything we discussed has been leaked to the paper; that’s not appropriate,” Xi said, according to a translator in the recording.

Others reports translated Xi's comments in full: “If there was sincerity on your part, than we shall conduct our discussion with an attitude of mutual respect, otherwise there might be unpredictable consequences."

Ardern's face-to-face with Xi Jinping

Ardern is set to meet face-to-face with Xi on the sidelines of Apec, one of a string of bilateral meetings Ardern has locked in.

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Xi attended the G20 in Bali, but not the earlier East Asia Summit and has already held numerous bilateral meetings with Western leaders this week.

It's a return to the world stage for Xi after nearly three years of tight Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. It comes as China faces domestic difficulties, competition between US and China continues to ramp up and at a time of particular global tension.

China has this year responded angrily to a high-level US visit to Taiwan, retaliating with show of military force that included firing missiles over the island nation. China appeared supportive of Russia’s justification of invading Ukraine, a clear breach of territorial sovereignty and international law, though in recent months it has called for de-escalation of the conflict.

A global inflation crisis, caused by the pandemic and worsened by the war in Ukraine, has hiked the price of food and fuel and put countries under economic stress.

China’s economy – vital to so much of the world’s economic prospects – has slowed due to Beijing’s tough Covid-19 restrictions and a property market downturn.

Xi has in recent days held face-to-face meetings with Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Bali.

Both the US and Australia have come into direct economic conflict with China in recent years. The bilateral meetings – in the case of Biden's, three hours long – were reportedly blunt but productive.

Biden and Xi discussed issues including the Ukraine war and human rights issues and the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel to Beijing to continue talks.

For Australia, it amounted to the end of a diplomatic freeze with China, which lashed Australia with wine and barley tariffs in 2020 in retaliation over Australia’s call for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

Asia New Zealand Foundation executive director Simon Draper said such face-to-face meetings “sends a whole lot of signals" into the respective countries systems.

"As always, I'm sure there are issues on which we agree and there'll be some issues we disagree. But that's, between the Prime Minister and President Xi.

“You can't overstate the importance of being in the room together, shaking their hand and looking each other in the eye.”

New Zealand has raised issues publicly with China, yet had not suffered the same backlash as its trans-Tasman neighbour.

Ardern in March called a security pact signed between Beijing and Solomon Islands “gravely concerning”, warning of potential “militarisation” of the Pacific.

New Zealand has also joined countries in urging China to take action after a United Nations investigation found it had committed possible crimes against humanity and “serious human rights violations” of the Uyghur Muslim minority in its Xinjiang province.

Ardern said such issues would be on the agenda for any bilateral meeting between the pair – alongside possibly urging China to take a firmer stance on the war in Ukraine.

Ardern in March called a security pact signed between Beijing and Solomon Islands “gravely concerning”, warning of potential “militarisation” of the Pacific.

"We say nothing publicly that we don't say privately. We're very transparent and we're very consistent.

“We're opposed to the militarisation of our region ... China has had a relationship in the Pacific that goes back many, many years. Our concern is the nature of some of that engagement.”

NZ's Apec legacy on the line

Ardern most recently spoke directly to Xi by phone in 2021, in the lead up to the last Apec leaders summit. That summit was held by New Zealand, the host country for the major forum in 2021, though it was held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

One of New Zealand's big coups when hosting the forum was an out-of-cycle "informal" leaders summit held months before the main event, to discuss the economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But another more technical achievement was getting Apec countries to reach an agreement – voluntary and written in cautious language – on a “standstill” on new fossil fuel subsidies.

Some countries offer subsidies on fuel consumption to encourage economic growth, and Apec countries are big fossil fuel users.

According to the International Energy Agency, three Apec countries are among the top ten fossil fuel subsidy users: China, Russia, and Indonesia.

Fuel prices have risen since, due to the war in Ukraine.

Draper said Apec rules such as the “standstill" on fossil fuels subsidies often don't "stick straight away”.

“There's often about momentum of building them this will be a chance for leaders to either reinforce or otherwise the importance of the rules, and my sense is that they will try to reinforce them.

"One of the things about Apec is, like an iceberg, you see the leaders meet at the top, but it's all the stuff that's happening under the water - and I'm sure that New Zealand officials will be pushing hard, as they have for quite a long time on fossil fuel subsidies.”

Ardern said the New Zealand agreement on fossil fuel subsidies was “not at all” at risk as it was now embedded in the forum's work.

"What we need to do is make sure that we keep making progress against it.

"Climate change will be a big issue for New Zealand and will be on our agenda in the issues that we raise at Apec - because it is also a cost of living issue, you can see the impact that our reliance on fossil fuels is happening on our economies as a result of what's happening in Europe.”

Economic stress due to rising fuel costs only “added further argument” to the need for remove subsidies and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Ardern said.