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Interview: China's WTO Entry to Boost Asian Power: ESCAP Chief
China's imminent entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) is certain to enhance the role of Asia-Pacific region and that of fellow developing countries in the global trade system, a United Nations regional chief said Friday in Bangkok.
"Under current circumstances, China's accession to the WTO is no doubt the bright spot in a bleak picture," U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Executive Secretary Kim Hak-Su told Xinhua during an interview.
ESCAP is the largest intergovernmental socioeconomic organization in the region and has long been specially focusing on the issue of China's WTO entry. It held a regional consultation on the upcoming WTO Doha meeting recently, during which issues concerning China's WTO accession has been widely discussed.
Quoting a U.N. report, Kim said while the recent terror attacks in the United States have further hurt the already sluggish economic prospect for the rest of the region, China remained largely unaffected with the 7.5-percent growth rate to be realized as expected.
"As a major economic player in the Asia-Pacific region and a major source of regional growth, China's WTO membership will certainly boost the economic prospect of the region as a whole," said Kim, noting that China has become the world's eighth-largest exporter and achieved a six-fold increase in trade with the rest of the region over last decade.
"Furthermore, China's stabilizing effect in the region has already been widely recognized," he said, recalling that China's insistence on not devaluating its currency amid the 1997 Asian financial crisis had avoided a further blow to the region.
Beyond its own region, China's WTO membership is expected to benefit all the rest developing world as well, Kim said.
"China shares many of the same concerns as other developing countries, so it is expected to tilt the balance of negotiating power in favor of developing countries on certain issues such as the need to avoid pegging WTO rules on labor and social issues," he pointed out.
Although China's WTO entry might pose challenges for other economies in the region in terms of exports and foreign investment, its benefits to the rest of the region will be more than the cost, Kim said.
"A vibrant Chinese economy and a liberalizing one, within the framework of WTO legally binding rules, will open up enormous opportunities for exports and investment from the rest of the region," said the eminent economic expert.
As for China itself, Kim predicted after the WTO entry, the country will face certain costs immediately but heap huge benefits in the future.
"The benefits are likely to be linked to enhanced opportunities for exports, attracting more investments and technology transfer that in turn will lead to enhance overall international competitiveness, while costs are likely to be felt intensely by some group of people such as state-enterprise workers and small- scale farmers."
What is important for China in facilitating the reform process, in Kim's view, is to repeatedly convince its public on the long- term benefits of the historic change brought about by the WTO membership and find ways to make the transition smoother and to make certain compensation for those who will lose.
He also said China will not worry too much about the possible trade disputes with other economies any more once it enters the WTO. "Dispute is unavoidable and actually the larger a country's exports the more likely that it is to happen."
Under the WTO's well-established and impartial mechanism for solving trade disputes, China's proper interests in international trade will be better protected, Kim said.
Above all, China's entry into the WTO signifies a major step forward in a decades-long reform process in the country and there is no turning-back for which the world could afford, he said.
"China has become so important that any turning-back into protectionism will be disastrous for the region and the world," said Kim.
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