Agence France Presse
BEIJING, March 26 (AFP) - European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy will fly in to Beijing on Tuesday for a new round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks that may end China's 14-year quest to join the trade body.
The EU is by far the largest remaining trading partner with which China has to work out a WTO deal.
Apart from the EU, China still has to agree to bilateral trade deals with Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico and Switzerland.
Chinese officials have signalled their optimism for a deal during this round of talks after inking agreements with Thailand, India, Argentina, Colombia, Poland and Kyrgyzstan in recent weeks.
After signing a deal in Thailand earlier this month, China's Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng talked confidently about the EU.
"Now the differences are narrowing through negotiations and I am full of confidence that when Mr. Lamy comes to Beijing we can find a way that both sides can accept," Shi said.
However, officials at the European Commission have remained tight-lipped since February's negotiations ended in stalemate.
Lamy's presence will fuel hopes for a China-EU deal, but EU negotiators are likely to fight hard for concessions in a wide variety of areas.
"We want to arrive at a bilateral EU-China accord that is satisfactory for both parties," Lamy's spokesman Anthony Gooch said in Brussels. "For the Chinese it will be one of the most important deals towards joining the WTO."
The last round of talks ground to a halt before Lamy, whose presence is needed to sign and seal an agreement, got on a plane for the Chinese capital.
Lamy holds the same status in the EU as Trade Representative Charlene Barshevsky does in the United States.
EU negotiators have said that the Sino-US agreement on China's WTO entry signed in Beijing in November covered 80 percent of their concerns, but have pledged to bargain hard for the remaining 20 percent.
Among the thorny issues that must be resolved are market access to the telecommunications sector -- especially the mobile telephone industry -- insurance and the financial sector.
In the telecommunications sector, EU concerns revolve around protecting foreign manufacturer access to China's burgeoning mobile phone market as domestic telecoms firms gain ground.
There are worries that the implicit or explicit use of quotas will block foreign firms access to the growing telecoms service sector.
"The EU is probably looking to remove the increasingly prefential treatment domestic manufactures are given of procurement of telecoms infrastructure," said Ross O'Brien, research director at Pyramid Research, a telecoms consultancy affiliated with the Economist Group.
"They want a more realistic timetable for access to the service market and to make sure they are not squeezed out of the market once China Inc. gets going," he added.
The European side has also been pushing for more than 51 percent foreign ownership rights for European telecom companies in joint ventures.
In the landmark Sino-US trade deal agreed to in November, US telecoms companies were only given the right to gradually take 50 percent stakes.
Meanwhile, EU insurers are hoping to win permission to take 51 percent stakes in mainland life insurance joint ventures, while insurance brokers are also clamouring for a slice of the Chinese market.
"If we are compelled to have a joint-venture then we want to have management control and can only guarantee (that) if you have majority ownership," said Hans-Jorg Prost, chief representative of German insurer Allianz, which has a 51 percent stake in a Shanghai joint insurance venture.
The Allianz deal with Shanghai Dazhong Insurance formally went into operation a year ago, before Chinese regulators began lowering the ceiling on foreign participation.
Sources say some hard bargaining also remains to be done over up to 100 tariff reductions on goods such as food, wine, glass, ceramics and pharmaceuticals.:
