Friday, November 10, 2000, updated at 14:54(GMT+8)
Business
US Scholar: China's WTO Entry Important for World Economy
At the invitation of the Information Office of the State Council, Stephen R. Lewis, president and professor of economics of the Carleton College of Minnesota State of America, has lately delivered a speech in Beijing on "China and WTO, Opportunity and Challenge". China's accession into the WTO is of crucial importance to the world trade, and China should be a member of it, he stressed.
Lewis said that China has witnessed an amazing development in its economy during the last 20 years, and few countries in the world can achieve such a big success in so short a time. Being a large exporting country, China has established trade ties with many countries, and its growth rate in exportation registered four folds in 1990s that of the world's average. On the other hand, China is also a big importing country, last year's import amounting to fifty percent that of the United Kingdom and France. To many exporting countries, China is a huge market with great potential.
China has become a very important region for many foreign investors and it has attracted a lot of foreign investment. China is playing an increasingly important role in international trade and investment. Therefore, China's WTO entry is not only of great importance to its economic development in the future, but also of equal importance to the development of world economy and trade, he added.
At the invitation of the Information Office of the State Council, Stephen R. Lewis, president and professor of economics of the Carleton College of Minnesota State of America, has lately delivered in Beijing a speech on "China and WTO, Opportunity and Challenge". China's accession into the WTO is of crucial importance to the world trade, and China should be a member of it, he stressed.