Reform should facilitate WTO in maintaining fair trade

If there is consensus on whether World Trade Organization should be reformed, how the world body should be reformed is at issue. But whatever a particular country pursues with this reform, one principle needs to be maintained: The multilateral trade regime must be protected and the role it plays in facilitating global free trade should never be undermined.

The proposals the Ministry of Commerce put forward on the weekend are so meant.

One of the proposals requires that the reform should tackle the most urgent problems the WTO faces: unilateralism and protectionism, the practices of which have become stumbling blocks preventing the relevant WTO mechanisms from playing their roles.