China Joining WTO This Year HopefulChina is expected to become a full member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) within this year, Monday's International Business Daily (IBD) quoted local trade experts as saying.IBD is a newspaper run by China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC). Since the beginning of June, China has reached overall consensus with the United States and the European Union on the remaining issues concerning the multi-lateral talks on China's WTO accession. The consensus, together with the support from other members of the WTO China working group, is believed to have " created an important condition" for finalizing the substantial talks during the 16th conference of the China working group coming Thursday in Geneva, and have basically "paved the way for China's final WTO entry in the coming months", An IBD report says. China has held bilateral talks with 37 members since it started in 1986 to seek resumption of its signatory country status in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Following the bilateral agreements between China and the United States in November 1999 and the European Union in May 2000, the country started its multi- lateral talks on the WTO entry last July. Agreements concluded after the bilateral talks are mainly on market access. The remaining issues concerning the multi-lateral talks, on the other hand, mainly address the applicability of relevant WTO agreements to China in drafting legal papers on China 's WTO entry, and how to clarify those unclear concepts that should have been made clear during bilateral talks. The IBD report foresees some difficulty in solving such remaining issues, though not many. The fact is that the United States and the European Union play a vital role in the multi- lateral talks concerning China's WTO accession, given their status in the organization. China, therefore, has to reach consensus with the two members respectively on such remaining issues before China finalizes its multi-lateral talks process, the report notes. The recent consensus reached between China and the two members are both "necessary and important", but are by no means the end of the multi-lateral talks. The key lies in whether Thursday's conference can finalize the drafting of relevant legal papers on China's WTO entry. Trade analysts here predict no big obstacles in this regard. If this is the case, China's WTO entry within this year will almost be certain, the report says. And loca media even predicts that China's final entry will be around this November, as some technical work are still to be done even if the upcoming conference of the China working group declares the finalization of substantial talks. Such technical work include proofreading thousands of pages of legal papers, getting ratification from governments of all relevant members and the final approval by vote at the WTO general council or ministerial conference. The exact timing of China's WTO entry might be before or during the WTO trade ministers' meeting in Doha, Qatar, in November this year. |
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