The mainland wants to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as an essential step towards becoming a superpower and believes that, after 20 years of reforms, its economy is strong enough to withstand the shock.
Thirteen years of long and tortuous negotiations on the mainland's accession nearly led to agreement between Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and United States President Bill Clinton in Washington last Thursday, but that wasn't to be. Now there is fresh hope with the news that intensified negotiations will be held in Beijing later this month.
US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky outlined the concessions Beijing had offered in exchange for membership.
They are so sweeping that Beijing does not dare publish them in the domestic press.
The concessions, including substantial tariff cuts and partial or majority ownership by foreigners of sectors previously closed to them, show Beijing's eagerness to join, despite opposition from protected industries and hardline communists who see the WTO as an instrument of capitalist domination. So why is the leadership so keen to join? The first reason is one of politics and prestige.
Membership would complete a 50-year circle, from 1949 when the communist government withdrew from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt), the WTO's predecessor, of which the Nationalist regime, driven out to Taiwan in 1949, had been a founding member in 1948.
