Clinton Seeks China's Secure Entry to WTO
UPI
January 30, 2000
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan.29, (UPI) -- In a bid to boost his country's prospects of securing entry to the World Trade Organization, China's Vice Premier Wu Bangguo unveiled an ambitious economic outlook that projects a doubling of the national output by 2010 and the average annual growth rate of 7 percent.
China projects its fixed asset investment will grow by 10 percent annually, and its total imports in the coming decade will exceed $2,000 billion, Wu told world political and corporate leaders attending the annual World Economic Forum here.
WTO membership, said Wu, an engineer and former electronic company executive, would be good for China and for the world and would create more opportunities for businessmen to participate in China's reconstruction.
He said that last November's Sino-US trade deal on China's WTO entry was "a big step forward" in the process of securing the necessary support.
The vice-premier said he was looking forward to permanent, normalized trade relations being approved by the U.S. Congress.
Earlier, President Clinton responding to whether he would rally support in the United States and worldwide to secure China's entry into the WTO, said that there were two groups in Congress that opposed China's entry into the organization. One had economic arguments, he said, and another because of actions taken to "preserve stability at the expense of Freedom."
But Clinton said: "I think it would be a mistake of monumental proportion for the United States not to support China's entry into the WTO."
A former senior U.S. trade official, who spoke on condition of non-attribution, said, "Clinton has to win on China in Congress, or we have a problem."
The former official said Clinton "needs legislation (from Congress) on the China thing, and he is rightly focused to try to achieve it before pushing hard for a new global round of trade talks."
"The real ball game is China, " the official said.
Earlier this week, Wu held entry talks (cont)
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