Handbook On China S Wto Accession And Its Impacts

It has taken China 15 long years of tough negotiations to achieve accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). By becoming a full member of the WTO, China has in fact made three tiers of commitments. The first tier is the commitment to the objectives of the WTO, such as free trade, most-favoured nations, national treatment and transparency, as expounded in the various documents setting up the organization and its predecessor, the GATT. The second tier is the commitment to the set of rules governing trade for specific sectors, such as agricultural and textile goods, or information technology and telecommunications. This is set out in China's accession protocol. The third tier is the commitment to bilateral agreements which China signed with her major trading partners. Their support is mandatory before China can be admitted to the WTO and therefore she has to satisfy each of them through elaborate bilateral negotiations. This handbook highlights the important commitments that China has made to the international community and analyzes the potential impact of such commitments on China.Part I of the book outlines China's commitments to convert her economy from a centrally planned one to a free market one as far as cross-border movement of goods, services and personnel is concerned. It reproduces China's commitments in a tabular format to facilitate reading, and is supplemented with brief references to WTO regulations where appropriate so that readers get to know how China's commitments relate to WTO obligations. Part II examines the impacts of China's WTO membership as a whole and on her specific economic sectors. Part III consists of Tables and Figures selected from a Report compiled by the US General Accounting Office, presenting some of the Office's analysis and findings of China's commitments on WTO accession.Appendix 1 lists all the legal instruments pertaining to China's accession to the WTO. Appendix 2 reprints the Protocol of China's Accession. China's schedule of commitments on services, rearranged in a format more comprehensible to the general reader, is included as Appendix 3, so that concerned readers can find out for themselves how their professions may be affected. Appendix 4 reprints the GATS Services Sectoral Classification GNS/W/120 and part of the CPC Provisional version. This appendix is attached to facilitate readers to check whether their specific professions, which are spelt out in 3-6 digit codes, are included in Chinese commitments.

With China's accession to the World Trade Organization imminent, this book brings together the expert views of scholars, policy-makers and business representatives on the consequences of this historic event. Insight into the past and future of China's relationship to the WTO is offered by authors involved on both sides of the negotiations on the EU-China bilateral agreement of May 2000 and the on-going negotiations up to spring 2001. An analyst and representatives from four economic sectors (the automobile industry, telecommunications, insurance and banking) clash over their predictions for the future. Also presented is an investigation of the challenges for China's political, social and legal systems, and revealing prognoses are given for the implications for global trade and investment flows for the EU and Greater China, and for the modus operandi of the WTO itself. By shedding light on economic effects and social and legal implications, the book gives a comprehensive picture of potential challenges arising from China's entry to the WTO.

"This paper is the introduction and summary chapter of the 43 chapter volume entitled Handbook of Trade Policy and WTO Accession for Development in Russia and the CIS. The key policy conclusions of each of the chapters are highlighted in this paper. The Handbook will be published only in Russian in 2005, but an English language version of the majority of the papers described here is available on the website www.worldbank.org/trade/russia-wto. This paper first explains the potential importance of World Trade Organization (WTO) accession as a development tool, and discusses the recent successful development models and the role of trade policy in their development. The paper then summarizes the three parts of the Handbook. The first part treats trade policy (with applications to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS]). The second part treats World Trade Organization institutions and disciplines, again with Russia and CIS applications. And the third part focuses on various aspects of the impact of WTO accession on Russia. The numerous papers that relate trade policy and WTO accession to experience in Russia and the CIS are likely to be of special interest to native English speakers, since these papers are new to the literature. The papers in the Handbook are intended to be non-technical materials accessible to a wide policy audience. The Handbook forms the basis of a World Bank Institute course on trade policy and WTO accession, which has been delivered and will be delivered again on multiple occasions. "--World Bank web site.

The book explores the macroeconomic and sectoral employment implications (in agriculture, industry and services) of China's World Trade Organisation accession. It argues that while short-run employment losses may occur, in the longer term China will be able to generate additional employment particularly in the tertiary sectors; and that it can maintain its comparative advantage in labour-intensive exports by relocating production from high-cost coastal areas to the hinterland with abundant supply of cheap labour. It also argues that, although China is likely to benefit in the long run, in the short and medium term China is likely to face enormous problems, including increased unemployment as weaker links cease to be protected by tariffs, and the problem of restructuring state-owned enterprises.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 1.6 (A), University of Manchester (Manchester School of Management), course: Manchester School of Management, language: English, abstract: What were the difficulties surrounding China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO)? Why has it taken the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over 15 years to join? What are the expected benefits and disadvantages of joining? What changes is WTO membership likely to bring to China’s economy in the future? These are the question this paper will address. WTO accession by China is often seen as the most significant event about China in the last decade, even ahead of the Taiwan Independence issue, which continues to penetrate world news periodically. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1978, China has been on a course of economic reform. Today, Chinese are richer than ever before in history, with the country itself having experienced extended periods of extraordinary growth. Specifically, this report will highlight China’s first attempts to join the WTO more than 15 years ago in chapter two. Chapter three will focus on the main areas of difficulty surrounding WTO accession, while chapter four will comment on the final accession in December 2001. The expected economic advantages and disadvantages for China will be discussed in chapter five; finally, chapter six will offer a brief future outlook for China, again mainly from an economic perspective.

China's accession to the WTO requires a great many specific policy reforms. However, if the best results are to be obtained, it is important that these reforms be implemented as part of a consistent development program, rather than simply by treating them as a recipe. To do this, policy makers must understand the range and nature of the policy changes required by accession, their implications for the economy, and the availability and effects of supporting policies. 'China and the WTO' analyzes the nature of the reforms involved in China's accession to the WTO, assesses their implications for the world economy, and examines the implications for individual households, particularly the poor. Its key objective is to provide the information that will allow policy makers to implement WTO commitments and formulate supporting policies to contribute strongly to economic development and poverty reduction. Individual chapters by leading scholars analyze the nature of the reforms in key areas, such as agriculture, services, intellectual property and safeguards and anti-dumping. These chapters form the building blocks for later chapters which analyze the implications of reform for the economy. The book also includes a series of studies that assess the implications for households, taking into account the social safety net policies applying in China, and the impacts of complementary policies in areas such as labor market reform and investments in human capital. Of interest to policymakers, academe and students studying international trade issues and to practitioners in the area of trade and development, 'China and the WTO' is a valuable addition to the wealth of information provided by the World Bank Trade and Development Series.

China, the world's sixth largest economy, has recently joined the rules-based international trading system. What are the implications of this accession? Leading scholars and practitioners from the US, Europe, China, Australia and Japan argue that China's membership will affect the WTO's decision-making, dispute resolution and rule-based structures. It will also spur legal and economic reform, have far-reaching social, political and distributional consequences in China, facilitate a new role for China in international geo-political affairs, and alter the shape, structure and content of the international trading system as a whole. Of interest to scholars of China, as well as trade lawyers and economists.