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Chairman's
note : WTO Deputy Director-General Paul-Henri Ravier
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Mr.
Chairman,I
am pleased to come to Geneva at the beginning of the New
Century together with my fellow colleagues of the Chinese
Delegation to participate the Fifteenth Session of the
Working Party on China's Accession to the WTO and to
continue the discussions with the Working Party members
on the outstanding issues in the multilateral process of
China's WTO accession.
First
of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to
the Acting Chairman of the Working Party and WTO Deputy
Director-General, Mr. Ravier, for your excellent
organizing and coordinating work. My gratitude also goes
to the Chairmen of the plurilateral groups and the
Secretariat for your contributions to the negotiations.
Mr.
Chairman,
Thanks
to the joint efforts made by all parties concerned,
significant progress on some outstanding issues has been
made during this Session. For instance, consensus has
been reached on the texts on anti-dumping and
product-specific safeguard provisions. As for the other
difficult issues, we have conducted serious and candid
consultations with relevant WTO Members at bilateral and
multilateral levels. As a result, we have focused our
discussions on the issues of differences and identified
efforts needed for resolving these issues. In a word, to
quote the remarks made by an EU representative who has
played an important role in the negotiations, “the
package agreement is very very closer”.
Mr.
Chairman,
China's
GATT/WTO accession negotiations has entered into the
fifteenth year. Like all the major trade negotiations,
the negotiations tend to become more difficult when they
are approaching the final end which requires the parties
concerned to demonstrate full confidence and mutual trust
and to show adequate courage and decision. We Chinese are
famous for our patience. My delegation will continue
these negotiations with patience and perseverance.
China's WTO accession is conducive to China's economic
development as well as to the strengthening of the
multilateral trading system. These are the sources of our
patience and perseverance.
It's
regretful that we could not reach a package agreement due
to one or two major issues. But the Chinese delegation
firmly believe that the positions we insist on are
correct and are supported by the majority of the WTO
Members.
With
regard to agriculture, China has a total agricultural
population of 900 million. Therefore, to ensure the
stability of agriculture is of utmost importance to
China's social stability and economic development. It is
a undisputed fact that China's agriculture is featured by
inferior natural endowments, inefficiency of labor force
and backward technology. China is willing to promote
restructuring in this sector and to participate in
international competition through opening the market of
agricultural products. However, the Chinese government
needs to maintain WTO-consistent agricultural support
measures after its accession to the WTO. The interests of
the 900 millions farmers will always be always our top
priority.
China
has made its efforts and concessions in the market access
negotiations in agriculture. China has committed to
deeply cut the tariffs of agricultural products and has
committed sufficient tariff quota quantities for such
important agricultural products as grains, cotton,
vegetable oil and sugar, and will apply a tariff quota
administration system which is open, transparent and
reflecting market conditions after accession. At the same
time, China has committed not to introduce export
subsidies of trade-distorting effect. Even the majority
of the developed countries have not yet done so and this
effort also demonstrates the enormous flexibility of
China for moving negotiations forward. However, the
precondition for this commitment is that China can not be
deprived of the rights of invoking developing countries
provisions with regard to domestic support.
At
the beginning of this Session, all parties concerned have
agreed to take a package approach which has been proved
correct by facts. A package solution is the only means to
balance and reflect the interests of all parties
concerned. However, there are also risks in a package
approach. Disagreement on one issue may result in the
failure of the whole package. During this session, all
parties concerned have made sincere efforts to reach this
goal. I hereby would like to express my gratitude to the
efforts made by the EU delegation in this regard. China
is still willing to continue the negotiations on a
balanced and package basis in the future. At the same
time, I want to urge relevant countries to make political
decisions on the basis of taking into full consideration
of the realistic possibilities of China's economic
development level and market supervising capability so as
to pave the way for a final package agreement.
Mr.
Chairman,
The
history of the past 20 years has proved that China's
reform and opening-up are conducive to the healthy and
rapid development of China's economy and has also
injected vigor into the global economy. No matter when it
accedes to the WTO, China will reduce its tariff level,
gradually eliminate non-tariff measures and adopt more
open, transparent, simple and market-oriented trade
administration measures in light of the need of its
economic development.
President
Jiang Zemin solemnly committed at the Fourth APEC Leaders
Summit in 1996 that China would reduce its tariff level
to around 15% in 2000. To that end, China has once again
taken the initiative to reduce its tariff level on
January 1 after five times of tariff reductions since
1992. After the reduction, the tariff level of China has
been reduced from 16.4% to 15.3%, which includes tariff
reductions on 3462 tariff lines with an average reduction
level of 6.6%, accounting for 49% of China's total tariff
lines. With this action, China has made its contributions
to the global trade liberalization.
China
is looking forward to its early accession to the WTO, by
that time, China will be able to start the implementation
of our commitments made in the WTO negotiations and
enable the WTO Members to benefit the significant
commitment of China's market opening.
Mr.
Chairman,
I
sincerely hope that when we meet in Geneva next time, all
WTO Members will be fully prepared to finally realize the
common objective of China's accession to the WTO.
Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
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