Joining WTO was a positive move
It's been 10 years since China joined the WTO, a landmark event in the process of China's opening-up to the outside world. Despite great concerns both in China and in other member states about the challenges China would face and those it might bring to other members, the worst-case scenario did not happen. On the contrary, China's membership has proved to be positive both for the country and for the rest of the world.
While it is true China paid a high price to join the WTO with quite a few WTO-plus clauses, and even some of a discriminative nature in the accession agreement, many of China's sensitive industries and sectors managed to overcome various difficulties and deal with the serious challenges effectively and successfully. As a result, China's foreign trade increased from about $500 billion in 2001 to more than $2 trillion in 2010.
China has become the world's largest exporter and its second-largest economy, which shows the decision to join the WTO by the Chinese government was the right one.
As a WTO member, China's contribution to the world has been great. It has faithfully implemented its accession commitments, which has won broad recognition among WTO members. Three director-generals of the WTO - Mike Moore, Supachai Pantchpakdi and Pascal Lamy - have commented positively about China's performance.
Since joining the WTO, China has reviewed all its trade-related laws and regulations to make them WTO consistent. It has reduced all import tariffs according to the time schedule of the accession agreement. It has opened about 100 subcategories of service trade according to its accession obligations. It has further strengthened protection of intellectual property. It has also actively participated in the Doha Round negotiations with a view to making the multilateral trading system more effective and more authoritative.
Since China joined the WTO, its imports from other members have increased very rapidly, with an average annual net increase of imports of more than $100 billion. China's contribution to world economic growth and to the recovery from the world financial and economic crises was impressive and was greatly appreciated by all WTO members.
Further opening-up is the key for China's way forward. Only then can China improve greatly the environment for development both at home and abroad. Further opening-up will provide impetus for China's domestic social, political and economic reform. Continued reform serves as an effective way to improve the function of the government, to address the uneven distribution of wealth among people, to protect the environment, to fight corruption and to improve the business environment for foreign and private investment.
The author is former ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
(China Daily 06/01/2011 page25)
