Agence France Presse
BEIJING, April 26 (AFP) - China said Wednesday it will open its fourth round of talks this year with the European Union on joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) from May 15.
China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and EU trade negotiators have agreed to follow up three former rounds of bilateral WTO talks earlier in the year, two held in Beijing, one in Brussels, Xinhua news agency reported.
The EU is the largest of China's trading partners yet to conclude a bilateral agreement that would open the way for Beijing to accede to the WTO and its rules-based trading regime.
The most recent round of talks between China and an EU team led by the Europeans' top trade negotiator Pascal Lamy collapsed in Beijing on March 31 with neither side indicating where the sticking points lay.
It was understood that some of the main hurdles were greater EU access to China's growing telecommunications and financial services sectors, particularly insurance.
The EU is also known to be keen on gaining entry into China's automobile, tobacco and oil seed markets.
China counted the EU as its third largest trading partner last year, while government statistics place China as the EU's fourth largest trading partner.
EU envoy in Beijing Endymion Wilkinson said on April 18 there was no link between the EU-China negotiations and intense internal politiciking in the US on whether to grant China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status.
Beijing insists the passing of PNTR is a prerequisite for the market-opening concessions it signed up to in a historic WTO deal with the US in November last year.
The EU said at the time that the US-China WTO accord covered around 80 percent of its demands.
Visiting US Commerce Secretary William Daley said on April 5, however, that a China-EU WTO agreement would make his job easier of convicing lawmakers at home to pass the PNTR legislation.
The US administration faces a struggle in convincing US politicians to support passing PNTR status with China in the lead-up to crucial votes by the House of Representatives on May 22, followed by a Senate vote in the week of June 5.
A number of US legislators want to maintain the yearly review of the trade status which it awards to nearly all other countries to apply political pressure on China in a variety of issues, including human rights.
Others are worried that US jobs would be lost as more US companies move their factories to utilize cheaper labour in China.
As Washington prepares for the vital votes, US Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman arrived in Beijing Tuesday with a US delegation study to drum up support for the granting of PNTR to China.
While he said he expected the legislation to pass, albeit by a fine margin, he warned of increasing scepticism to free trade in the US.:
