By: DAVID WILLIAMS | Agence France Presse
DOHA, Nov 10 -- China won admission Saturday to the World Trade Organization, capping 15 years of tortuous negotiations, and immediately threw its weight behind the cause of developing nations.
The chairman of the WTO conference, Qatari Economy Minister Youssef Hussain Kamal, banged a gavel to officially mark WTO endorsement of Chinese membership.
Delegates in a packed hall at the WTO ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, greeted the decision with a standing ovation.
No vote was taken. A consensus on China's entry was assumed after no objections from WTO members were raised to the proposal. "After 15 years of difficult negotiations, we finally came to this historic moment," Chinese Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng said.
China supported the struggle by WTO members in Doha to bridge deep divisions and draw up an agenda for talks to lower worldwide barriers to trade, Shi told the conference.
But he insisted on a better deal for developing countries, whose dissatisfaction with the meagre fruits of world trade so far threatens to block a deal here.
"We need to face up to the obvious defects of the existing multilateral trading system so as to reflect the interests and demands of developing countries in a more adequate fashion," Shi said.
New trade negotiations must avoid widening the gap between rich and poor and give special consideration to the need for developing countries to open their economies more slowly, he said.
Beijing will formally sign its accession documents Sunday before ratifiying the agreement. China becomes a full member of the WTO only 30 days after ratification.
"It has been a long process for China," US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told the conference.
"In admitting China to the WTO we took a decisive step in shaping the global economic and commercial system," he added.
China would gain by strengthening its opening up the outside world, Zoellick said. WTO members in turn would get access to the 1.3 billion people in the Chinese market under interationally accepted rules.
"This decision is an historic one and the WTO's greatest leap towards becoming a universal organisation," European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy told the meeting.
Countries in the WTO are hoping China will give a shot in the arm to the world economy, sliding towards recession after the September 11 suicide attacks in the United States shattered consumer confidence.
China's entry also has the potential to usher in change, even painful upheaval, at home.
China made far-reaching concessions to gain admittance to the global trading system, which it left in 1949 when the communists took power.
Beijing has already agreed to eliminate all agricultural export subsidies upon admission to the WTO -- something the European Union and Japan refuse even to countenance.
China is also to cut domestic agricultural support to 8.5 percent, well below the developing countries' ceiling of 10 percent.
Analysts have warned that exposure to outside competition could have unwanted social consequences, as inefficient state companies shed workers and cut other costs to keep up with their foreign rivals.
In China's automobile sector alone, 10 million Chinese workers are expected to lose their jobs when tariffs are lowered under Beijing's terms of WTO accession, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions said in a statement.
"Chinese workers need the protection of free trade unions to cope with the forthcoming developments," ICFTU General Secretary Bill Jordan said.
A senior US trade official cited estimates that another 10 million people in China who work in agriculture could be displaced as a result of Beijing's WTO concessions.
But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said China was a voice for free trade that could provide a new impetus for liberalization among developing nations.
"One of our hopes is that, having undertaken more extensive commitments than let us say Bangladesh, that would give them an interest in seeing developing countries undertake broader commitments so that they are on a level playing field," the official said.
"That was one of the strategies in the negotiation process."
China's archrival Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province since the end of a civil war in 1949, is scheduled to gain admission to the WTO on Sunday.By: DAVID WILLIAMS:
