| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, November 16, 2001 |
China to Reduce Import Tariffs on 1st Jan.2002 |
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According to the WTO agreement, China will attain formal WTO membership status as from 11th December 2001 and China is supposed to starting reducing its tariff from that very day on.
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As announced China is going to cut tariffs and implement new customs rules and regulations from January 1, 2002.
According to the WTO agreement, China will attain formal WTO membership status as from 11th December 2001 and China is supposed to starting reducing its tariff from that very day on. Since China has promised to lower tariffs as soon as it enters into the WTO, why not cut tariffs on that day? Posed this question, Yi Xiaozhun, Director of the International Department within the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, explained that it is a usual practice for China to introduce new customs rules and regulations every January 1st. Chaos may occur if China reduces tariffs twice within a short time of 20 days between 11th December 2001 and 1st January 2002. Given this consideration, the Chinese government merged the two into one.
He further added as stipulated in the protocol the approved transition period for implementing the various membership conditions, such as the liberalizing of certain markets, also starts from January 1, 2002.
Regarding the membership dues, Yi indicated that so far it hasn't been discussed with the secretariat and there would be no problems for China to abide by the agreements.
On 13th November, prior to the Chinese delegation's departure from Doha, Yi highlighted the other tasks of the Chinese delegation. With regards to the unresolved China-Japan trade dispute, Yi quoted as reported that Japan was willing to settle the case by multilateral talks after China's joining the WTO. On 13th November, the director of the Japanese delegation was quoted by a Hong Kong reporter as saying that what Japan actually wanted was to solve the problem before China's entry into the WTO. However, according to a senior Japanese reporter, it was later proved that the director of the Japanese delegation did not make that statement. What he wanted was a resumption of talks next week with Minister Shi Guangsheng on a lower diplomatic level, either on vice-minister or division-director level after their initial constructive talks and that was later confirmed by Chinese officials. Nevertheless, Yi noted, China hopes to resolve the dispute either by bilateral talks or if necessary, by multilateral talks.
By PD Online Staff Yang Ruoqian
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