SPECIAL FEATURE: WTO - What's the Hold-up

It is quite remarkable that it is just a few months shy of 15 years since China applied to resume its status as a contracting party to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the predecessor of today's World Trade Organization.2With the founding of the WTO on January 1 1995, China's application became acknowledged as one for accession to membership in the new global trade body. Why is the world still waiting for this accession to occur?

THE STORY SO FAR 

The extraordinary length of the review process for China's participation in the global trade system is a reflection of many factors, among them:

(a) careful consideration of the sheer size of China's continually expanding economy and the potentially serious impact its trading activities can have on the economies of its trading partners;

(b) delays occasioned by the complex inter-relationship between trade and political issues in relations between the PRC and its largest trading partners (America, Canada, the European Union and Japan) and;

(c) the time and plain hard work required for the development and dissemination of, and adherence within the PRC to, economic and legal norms that are sufficiently compatible with the requirements of the agreements administered by the WTO.³

With respect to this last factor, while China's largest trading partners still regard the development of such norms to be work in progress, much credit must be given to the Chinese leadership for how far they have come over such a relatively short period of time.

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