On December 11, 2001, China officially joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and became the 143rd member of the WTO. Over the past 14 years, China has earnestly fulfilled its commitments to the WTO, deepened the reforms, participated in economic globalization in a wider range and on a deeper level, and also took on a more active role in global economic governance.

The guest speakers are as follows:

Song Hong (Researcher of the World Economic and Political Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Sheng bin (Dean of APEC Research Institute, Nankai University, Professor of Institute of International economics, Nankai University,)

Tu Xinquan (Dean of China Institute for WTO Studies, University of International Business and Economics)

Keith Rockwell (Spokesman for the World Trade Organization)

John Natsu Melze (Senior Research Fellow of the Brookings Institution)

Gao Shuchao (Member of the Advisory Committee of the WTO Chairs Program, Secretariat of the WTO, Associate Professor of School of law, Singapore Management University)

The average tariff level of China dropped from 15.88% in 2001 to 9.6% in 2014, China indeed fulfilled the commitment to WTO outstandingly

Song Hong: China's accession to the WTO has brought extensive and profound changes in all sectors of China. After China's accession to the WTO, the Chinese government has carried out more than 2000 major policy reforms and adjustments at national level.

Sheng Bin: China has made remarkable achievements in the field of commitment to trade and economic reform since its accession to the WTO. First, there is significant improvement in market access and openness. Second, China vigorously promotes the construction of a rule-based, market-oriented system of economic and trade laws and regulations. Third, the transparency of policy management is increased dramatically.

Tu Xinquan: Accession to the WTO not only means considerable reduction of tariff and non-tariff barrier, but also means the significant adjustment of the domestic economy. It is particularly important that China's business and investment environment has been clearly regulated by international rules for the first time, which greatly enhances the confidence and expectations of foreign investors towards China.

Keith Rockwell: We should use "excellent" to describe the performance of China after entering the WTO for 14 years. Even if we look at it only in terms of trade, China has completely changed, including the trade policy from the anti-dumping to trade disputes settlement, and from the transparency of trade policies to cargo logistics system, the reforms in China are indeed wide and profound.

John Natsu Melze: China's accession to the WTO brought two beneficial changes to China's economy: First, WTO thought highly of China's development, and China can enter the international market in a larger scale, which will expand exports of China; the second is China's fulfillment of its commitment to carry out a series of reforms, which further strengthened the competitiveness of Chinese products, thus it is easier for Chinese enterprises to go global.

Gao Shuchao: In April 2006, the WTO carried the first trade policy review on China since its accession to the WTO—-Generally, China has fulfilled most of the WTO commitments: China's tariffs on industrial products was now the lowest level among developing countries, and tariffs on agricultural products was far lower than most countries. In September 2006, the then WTO Director General Pascal Lamy gave an A+ to the China’s performance since its accession to the WTO and he thought, obviously, China has fully fulfilled its commitments and set an example for the members of the WTO.

Growing from an ordinary member to a vital one in the WTO core decision-making members, China constantly strives for raising the voice of developing countries

Songhong: Shortly after China's accession to the WTO, China’s role as the world's manufacturing center, and the role of Global trade agency in East Asia, and even the world began to function: On one hand, China imported raw materials and intermediate goods from Japan and the Asian Tigers; on the other, China exported to Europe and the United States and developing countries. The trade relationship between China and the major countries is of regional and even global significance, and far beyond the simple bilateral level.

Sheng Bin: China is a steadfast supporter of the multilateral trading system, defenders and important contributors. China's participation in the WTO negotiations and affairs has made contributions to promote the early and fully completion of the Doha Round negotiations. China has set an example on the issue of market access for the least developed countries. China adheres to the market opening and resolutely opposes trade protectionism of all kinds.

Tu Xinquan: China's performance after the accession to the WTO is beyond all optimistic expectations, and it also poses far-reaching impacts on the pattern of world trade. This is reflected in the rapid rise of China has greatly enhanced the status and influence of developing countries in the world economy and trade; second, the rapidly shrinking gap between China and the United States in terms of economic strength.

China is a splendid demonstration to the development of the multilateral trading system. As the fastest growing power in the WTO developing countries, Chinese has shown that opening up creates favorable conditions for economic development and also encouraged more participation in, and active use of WTO by developing countries.

Keith Rockwell: in fact, China is playing a very positive role among WTO committees and different countries negotiations. China has a great contribution to the WTO and the global trading system.

Gao Shuchao: China are increasingly familiar with the WTO rules since its entry into the WTO, and gradually, China can actively make use of , as well as take the initiative to formulate rules in line with its own interests, which is a big change compared with the passive acceptance to the rules in the past .

In terms of WTO negotiations, China has also played an increasingly important role. Growing from an ordinary member to a vital one in the WTO core decision-making members, China constantly strives for raising the voice of developing countries and make solid efforts to safeguard the rights and interests of developing countries.

WTO is still playing a unique role in settling trade disputes and regulating trade policies despite the constant emergence of bilateral and regional free trade agreements

Tu Xinquan: Currently, bilateral and regional free trade agreements have emerged in large numbers, which is undoubtedly a huge challenge for WTO, but also an inevitable result of trend of the evolution of the world trade patterns, which is beyond WTO’s control. Fundamentally speaking, the double oligopoly pattern led by the United States and the European Union in the WTO was broken. China, India and other emerging countries are now challenging the dominant power of the developed countries. The narrowing gap in terms of the national strength and the huge divergence in policy made the Doha round stagnant, which also forced the United States and the European Union resorted to the second best choice—-regional trade agreements.

From current point of view, developed countries focus less on WTO, and transformed the birthplace of new international trade and investment rules from WTO to regional platform, but this will not make WTO completely useless. After all, all of these new rules eventually resort to multilateral and globalization, the WTO is the only route for such a platform. At the same time, emerging powers haven’t joined the new negotiations, such as TPP, TTIP, and TISA led by the United States and Europe, which means that the coordination of trade policy between developed country and developing country still needs to be settled under the framework of WTO.

Sheng Bin: At present, although the WTO system occupies the advantage of multilateralism, but it cannot provide power for the new rules to be developed in twenty-first Century with high standards and quality of Global trade and investment. If it is said that when the General Agreement of Tariff and Trade (GATT) is 1.0 version of the trade agreement, then the WTO is the 2.0 version of the trade agreement, and these regional or bilateral agreement is 3.0 version of the trade agreement, so they are based on the trade agreements with higher standards and quality, which is required by the new development of the current global value chain and the international production networks.

Keith Rockwell: Bilateral and regional free trade agreements are neither a piece of news nor a threat to WTO. In fact, these agreements will inject new ideas, new energies, and the spirit of trade encouragement into WTO. We can see the WTO traits in almost every other trade agreement. WTO will continue to play an unique and important role in resolving trade disputes and monitoring trade policies in order to help support the operation of the global trading system.

John Melze: TPP is still in the developing phase right now, the provisions of the content and organizational structure has not yet been fully shaped, and the future development of TPP is yet to be observed. China has now become an important trading power in the Asia Pacific region and even the world, whether for WTO, TPP, or other institutions, it is always a pity without China.

Gao Shuchao: A major reason for the popularity of regional FTA is that the Doha round has been stagnant for a long time in the past 14 years. In order to achieve the goal of opening up foreign markets, the United States and Europe and other countries have turned to the free trade agreement negotiations. On the one hand, the new rules of TPP will cause further differentiation of the world; on the other, TPP rules will have a far-reaching impact on the WTO, many of the TPP issues will be gradually integrated into the agenda of WTO.

China's efforts to build a new open economy system is the biggest contribution to the multilateral trading system

Song Hong: China can play a role in three areas under the context of a weak and even shrinking global economy. The first is to promote greater South-South cooperation, and play a leading role. Secondly, launch bilateral or regional trade negotiations with the major developed countries, participate in the formulating of new rules to promote its balanced development. Third, promote the construction of regional network surrounding China and develop build an open regional cooperation, and make "The Belt and Road" initiative a new model with international open regional cooperation and mutual benefits.

Sheng Bin: China should actively build a new system of open economy, implement a new round of high-level policies to complete the formation of a new pattern of all-around opening-up, which is also the greatest contribution to the multilateral trading system.

Tu Xinquan: China has already been a vital power of the global economic framework, and China can play a constructive role in global economic governance, as well as in restricting the dominance roles of developed countries.

John Melze: China has become the second largest economy around the world, China needs more active participation in global governance, better play its role as an important member of the WTO, and lead the global economy to healthy development. It's beneficial for the world’s economy as well as China's.

 

December 11, 2015  Source: People's daily

Translator: Song Yida

Reviser: Liang Xiaoyu