China's agricultural influence starts to grow within WTO
By Carl Mortished
CHINA has begun to put its cards on the table at the World Trade Organisation and the balance of power in the global trade negotiations is shifting very gradually to the South.
The signal came last week when a group of developing nations formed an ad hoc alliance to oppose an American and European plan to reform trade in agriculture. With the Cancún WTO summit a fortnight away, trade intermediaries are negotiating frantically in the corridors, doing deals and making alliances.
But this one is different. Three large, rapidly industrialising nations, Brazil, India and South Africa, have joined hands with the world’s most populous country. The group comprises 12 others, including Argentina, Mexico and Thailand, but it is the four big guns, each a leading regional power, that pull the strings.
Beijing is joining a former enemy; the issue of Tibet, a running sore that divides the two countries more effectively than the Himalayas, has been put aside. Likewise, Delhi is not playing up Chinese support for Pakistan. The countries have found common ground and it is exciting delegates and observers at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters. Some speculate that the group of four might become a more permanent feature of global trade talks. Celine Charveriat, of Oxfam, said; “It is the first time the emerging economic powers from the Third World are getting together to challenge the status quo.”
If the group survives it will be formidable, accounting for two thirds of the world’s farmers and more than half of its cereal production. Its members want to end US and EU farm subsidies but keep tariffs to protect their farmers from cheap American rice and wheat imports. In that respect they differ from the Cairns group, an alliance of farm exporters, including Canada and Australia. Once influential in the WTO, the Cairns lobby may see its star wane as the developing nations push their own interests.
They may have a champion in China, which fought hard to join the WTO. It was forced to make big concessions, such as the dismantling of tariff walls and other bars to market access, such as foreign ownership restrictions. At the same time it had to swallow safeguard measures allowing America and Europe to keep curbing imports of Chinese textiles for four years after such quotas end under WTO rules in 2004.
Nevertheless, China joined with a fanfare of celebration at the WTO summit in Doha in November 2001. Then, for almost two years, it watched and waited while the big trading nations argued and procrastinated over implementing the Doha “development agenda”. China used the time well. “They have spent time working with the Brazilians. For a new member they have been very effective in the things they have done,” one US diplomat said.
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