Bringing China into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) never was considered an easy project and the latest problems in Beijing prove the point. Even after passing the hurdle of the American Congress and winning permanent normal trading rights - President Bill Clinton signed the necessary bill into law on Tuesday - several other issues remain.
There is no doubt that China eventually will become a full WTO member, but now it appears accession may not come until next year, rather than this year as all involved parties had hoped. On the formal negotiating front, for example, China and Mexico still must agree on specific entry terms which affect their special interests - terms that would then apply to every member under the most favoured nation rule.
That is likely to be more time-consuming than conceptually difficult. But much more troublesome are the issues which caused US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky to rush to Beijing this week, where Premier Zhu Rongji found time for her by delaying his important Japanese trip. These problems reflect the fundamental differences between the legal and economic systems of China and those of its main trading partners.
In broad terms, the current holdups concern China's need to put into effect the rules and regulations required to implement the many WTO rules it has accepted in principle. These are not trivial things. Included are the need for believable assurances that domestic and foreign entities will receive equal treatment, and that WTO terms will be enforced uniformly across China - without variation from province to province.
It appears that US and European Union (EU) officials suspect some Chinese bureaucrats are having second thoughts about moving quickly to carry through the full WTO package. If so, such reservations would be understandable. Eventually, membership will bring rigorous new competition to Chinese industry, finance and agriculture, and many managers are not eager for the experience. They would rather delay the process and some attempts to do just that appear to be under way.
Beyond that, China needs to issue or revise laws necessary to permit trade and investment under WTO terms. But its own legal and economic systems often reflect Maoist theory and state planning, and these don't mesh easily with foreign free market ways. The US and EU want China to make revisions quickly, but some Chinese officials suspect this is intended to wrest new concessions rather than merely implement old ones.