U.S., China Plan High-Level Talks
By HANS GREIMEL Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Top-level U.S. negotiators will head to Beijing later this month to try again to reach an agreement to lower China's trade barriers to American products, a prerequisite to U.S. endorsement of that nation's bid for membership in the World Trade Organization.
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said Tuesday he will lead a delegation of top economic policy-makers from a number of Cabinet agencies. The talks are set to begin Oct. 25.
Once a deal is struck, the United States has said it will drop its objections to China's entry into the 134-member WTO, the international group that sets rules for world trade.
''We will not conclude these negotiations until China's commitments are very clear, and the interests of American producers are adequately safeguarded from sudden market shifts,'' Summers said in remarks to the Asia Society.
This upcoming talks will be the 12th meeting of the China-United States Joint Economic Committee. The forum, which was created to promote closer economic relations, last met in May 1998 in Washington.
Summers said that in addition to China's entry into the WTO, the discussions will focus on such issues as combatting money laundering and reforming China's financial sector to include fair tax laws, contract enforcement and better protection for investors.
While Summers said U.S. negotiators were going to Beijing in good spirits, he added that he expected the issue of China's WTO membership to require further talks.
He also emphasized that it was important for China to continue pushing ahead with economic reforms, including an overhaul of its huge and unprofitable state-owned enterprises.
''No one should imagine that breaking the dependence of loss-making state-owned enterprises and their workers on a near-bankrupt financial sector will be easy,'' Summers said. But he said China's transition to a ''stable and prosperous'' economy won't occur without these reforms.
Summers said the administration remained committed to China's entry into the WTO but only on commercially acceptable terms.
The Clinton administration has continued to insist that a WTO deal is still possible this year even though U.S. hopes were dealt a setback last month when China cut short a negotiating session in Washington and left its chief negotiator on the WTO issues at home in Beijing.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said it was important that the two sides had resumed substantive negotiations after the Chinese suspended the trade talks for five months to protest the United States' accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.
The two countries came close to a deal in April during a visit to Washington by Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji. President Clinton's decision to hold out for more concessions has been criticized by a number of industries that believed the offer China put forward in April represented a major breakthrough in removing barriers they have long complained about.
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