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Roundup: WSC Highlights China's Services Potentials
World Services Congress 2001, an international forum on the development and strategies of the global services industry, with its focus on China's fledgling services market, opened here at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center on Thursday.
The potential services market in China, and the opportunities and challenges arising from China's accession into the WTO were the major topics of the two-day meeting with its core theme being "the driver for the global economy."
"With prominent speakers from China's mainland, this congress is perhaps a little like a final warm-up session for businesses aspiring to seize the early opportunities from China's accession," said Hong Kong Financial Secretary Antony Leung at the opening ceremony of the World Services Congress 2001.
Leung said China's accession to the WTO will provide a new dimension to this for both small and large businesses around the globe, meaning a more market-oriented, more transparent and rules- based economy opening up for greater access by foreign companies, and enabling the mainland to fully integrate into the global marketplace enjoying the same benefits as the rest of the world.
David Cunningham, president of FedEx Asia Pacific, said China's pending entry into WTO will generate enormous opportunities for services sector and give impetus to the country's already robust economic growth. He also foresaw a tremendous potential for the global financial and telecommunications services industries.
Over 100 high-level national and international leaders from business sector, government, academia, regulatory bodies, and the media gathered here to address the key economic and policy issues confronting the global services economy.
Among them were Director General of World Trade Organization Mike Moore, Chairman of U.S. Coalition of Service Industries Dean O'hare and Chairman of Hong Kong Coalition of Service Industries Stanley Ko.
"I believe this event can make a major contribution to thinking and policy development in a key area of world trade," Moore said.
Moore said that one of the most striking developments in the multilateral trading system since the inception of the WTO in 1995 has been the speed with which it has assimilated the liberalization of trade in services, once so controversial, as a vital element in economic growth and international cooperation.
He expressed his hope that the congress pass the message that in services even more obviously than in traditional trade protectionism is self-defeating, and that it is those who liberalize, not their trading partners, who will benefit first and most from the liberalization process.
Participants to the congress are also expected to discuss the effects of globalization on the services industries, trade liberalization and multilateral trade policies.
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