| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, November 17, 2001 |
China's WTO Entry Good for Human Development: Experts |
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China's newly approved entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) will help control population growth and improve the quality of the population, family planning experts told participants of a seminar Friday.
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China's newly approved entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) will help control population growth and improve the quality of the population, family planning experts told participants of a seminar Friday.
The seminar, jointly held by the State Family Planning Commission and China's Population Institute (CPI), was organized to discuss the impact of China's entry into WTO on its population and family planning policy.
CPI Vice President Tian Xueyuan said that with China's WTO entry, exports will increase and more foreign capital will flow into the Chinese market. Customs will further crack down on smuggling activities, which will help increase revenues.
This is all good for China's economic development, he said, pointing out that research shows that birth rate is in direct proportion to a country's economic development level.
Wu Cangping, also a vice president of CPI, analyzed the potential changes in the employment structure that will follow China's WTO entry.
The increase of foreign investment will not only create more employment opportunities for China's workforce of 900 million, but also strengthen the development of hi-tech industries, Wu said.
Tian Xueyuan also said that WTO entry will help China quicken its urbanization pace, which will benefit both family planning and the improvement of population quality.
Tian said there will be a large amount of cheap agricultural products pouring into Chinese markets, which will influence the development trend in the rural areas as well as agricultural industries. An increasing number of rural workers will pour into the urban areas, he said.
On the issue of population quality, Tian said China's WTO entry will bring more frequent cross-national cultural and information exchanges, which will improve the whole country's education level.
"China will witness an obvious development of the study of foreign languages, information technologies and economic knowledge. The number of people who receive high-level education specializing in WTO-related fields will be greatly increased," Tian added.
Meanwhile, experts and scholars attending the seminar pointed out that China's entry into WTO will inevitably bring about challenges as well as opportunities.
The problems, such as maintaining a stable birth rate and taking care of the aging population in rural areas, aroused common concern among those participating in the seminar.
In addition, people in the western region have entirely different social conventions and ideas about family planning, which will certainly effect China's population development,
according to the experts.
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