To: Maurice Winn (0 )
From: Ruffian
Saturday, Nov 13 1999 7:25PM ET
Reply # of 1006
WTO Break Through>
U.S. Reports 'Productive' Meeting
With China on WTO Membership
Associated Press
BEIJING -- Following a breakthrough intervention by China's premier,
senior U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators held a flurry of talks Saturday,
moving toward an agreement to bolster Beijing's entry to the World Trade
Organization.
The negotiations were billed as China's best chance to break a half-year
stalemate and clear the biggest hurdle in its 13-year bid to join world
trade's rule-making body. Talks verged on collapse for three days until
Chinese officials set up Saturday's meeting with Premier Zhu Rongji.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky had a "productive"
session with Zhu inside the Communist Party leadership compound,
Zhongnanhai, her spokesman Tom Tripp said.
Afterwards, she went twice to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and
Economic Cooperation for discussions with trade minister Shi Guangsheng
on opening China's relatively closed markets. Lower-level negotiators
worked out technical details into the night.
Although both sides declined to reveal details, the Zhu meeting "set off a
high-level of activity. That's a good sign," said a Western diplomat on
condition of anonymity. The diplomat described the mood among the U.S.
team as the best it had been since the current round opened Wednesday.
Pressure has been building on both governments to come to terms on a
market-access agreement, a precondition for joining the World Trade
Organization. China must negotiate a similar pact with the European Union
next week.
All sides are facing a self-imposed deadline of Nov. 30, when the
134-member trade organization considers new global trade liberalization. If
those talks are launched, Beijing could be shut out of the Geneva-based
group for months if not years and would have no say over the new rules.
In the six months since he turned down broad concessions from Zhu in
April, President Clinton has realized he let a historic opportunity slip.
American businesses have lobbied for a World Trade Organization deal
for China.
Membership will force China to abide by a set of transparent rules and
allow U.S. and other foreign companies to sell goods and services directly
to the blossoming Chinese middle class. Tariffs and other barriers to trade
and investment will fall.
For China, consumers will immediately benefit, having access to
lower-priced goods, cheaper cars, better phone service. Foreign
investment will boost economic growth and create needed jobs. Industries
long-cosseted under central planning will be forced to change or whither
under the competition.
"The success of my country's 20 years of reforms has largely, almost all of
it, been due to learning modern methods from abroad. We have not only
benefited from technology, but even more from the market system," said
Mao Yushi, an economist with Unirule, a think tank and consulting firm
here.
China's leaders have had to overcome strong domestic fears about the
global competition of membership in the trade group. Anti-U.S. sentiment
ignited by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's bombing of the Chinese
Embassy in Yugoslavia made accommodating Washington politically
dangerous, leading to months of foot-dragging on trade.
By intervening in Ms. Barshefsky's talks with Shi, Zhu gave one of the
surest signs that he and other reform-minded Chinese leaders have
regained the offensive. In four sessions over three days, Mr. Shi had shied
from significant concessions in sensitive service sectors -- a key U.S.
demand.
Zhu and other reform-minded Chinese leaders believe World Trade
Organization membership will prod reluctant state industries and their
political backers into making the government-ordered changes they have
resisted for nearly two years.
But because China's markets have been protected for so long, the
dislocations will be enormous. In the short term, unemployment, already
running at about 8% in the cities, will swell as state factories fail. Small
family farms will go under, adding to the 130 million rural migrants combing
China for work.
"In the WTO, everyone is equal before the rules. But if the laws are equal
for all then it's not equal for the weak and the small, and the results won't
benefit them," said Mao. |
