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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, November 30, 2001

"WTO Negotiation", Tantamount to the "Long March": Long Yongtu

The long-term negotiation seemed to be a "Long March" full of arduous difficulties. However, the lengthy negotiation has offered us a chance for a preparation sufficient enough to cope with the opportunities and challenges brought upon us by the economic globalization, in which we've become maturer in the fundamental conditions in finance, system structures and policies.


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"China's New Image after its Entry into WTO", this is the title of a speech addressed by Long Yongtu, vice-minister of the MOFTEC and China's chief negotiator for the WTO entry, at the "14th Workshop of the Pacific Economic Cooperation" held in Hong Kong.

The speech gives a deep analysis to the new roles China is going to play in the global market, its influence exerted upon the regional economy, and also an answer to the question about China's new trade and investment system after its WTO entry.

China is full of confidence to meet the challenges confronted after its WTO entry, said Long Yongtu. It is a reasonable and logical development of the continuous and deep-going process of China's reform and opening to the outside world in the past 20 years. The long-term negotiation seemed to be a "Long March" full of arduous difficulties. However, the lengthy negotiation has offered us a chance for a preparation sufficient enough to cope with the opportunities and challenges brought upon us by the economic globalization, in which we've become maturer in the fundamental conditions in finance, system structures and policies. It's just because of this that if someone wanted to ask me whether China has made its preparation well enough to join the WTO, I would be very confident to give him an affirmative answer: yes. For this day, we've already accumulated our strength for some 23 years, traversed through a road of 15 years.

After its WTO entry, China will be playing a positive and constructive role as it has always been doing, expressed Long Yongtu, to push the economic globalization forward, making those WTO member countries the poor and the rich, the developed and the developing to benefit from it. Of the decisions made at the Doha conference what he felt most overjoyed were the two: one was for China to join the WTO and another the new round of multilateral trade talks. China is going to play a very active role in the new round of multilateral talks and we also believe that the new round of talks will make China's economic system open wider, create a freer and a widely opened world economic system. This is conducive to the whole world.

For many years, said Long Yongtu, we've persisted in the "dual-win" conception and so the process has proved that China's entry into the WTO is not only good for the interest of China but also for the benefit of other countries of the world.



By PD Online Staff Han Rongliang
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