Inside Out | As China marks 20 years of accession to the WTO, what of the trade body’s vitality and relevance?

China becoming a member of the WTO transformed the country into a significant force at the heart of the global economic system

However, with momentum behind the Doha Round of negotiations fading, so too has the WTO’s capacity to tackle 21st century trade policy challenges

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Trucks manufactured for export are lined up at a cargo port in Yantai in eastern China’s Shandong province on July 30. Trade as a percentage of China’s GDP peaked in 2006 at around 64 per cent, but has now fallen back to about 34 per cent. Photo: AP

Published: 5:00pm, 12 Dec 2021

When Beijing’s leaders sat down in Doha 20 years ago to sign China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, neither they, nor existing WTO members, realised that this would be the high-water mark of free trade and globalisation, and the biggest – perhaps the only – achievement ever made by the Geneva-based trade body.

The 2001 accession has transformed China internally, and provided a notable landmark in the country’s passage from a sad, secretive, impoverished shambles in the 1970s to a significant force at the heart of the global economic system today.

It has turned the balance of international economic power on its head, much to the consternation of the small group of Western powers that shaped international trade at the time.

Many at the table on December 11, 2001, recognised that this was an agreement of massive global significance – which is perhaps why it took almost 15 years to negotiate (though the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 undoubtedly contributed to delay), and why China was required to make tougher commitments and concessions than any other WTO member.

China had been a member of the United Nations since 1971 and of the World Bank and IMF since 1980, but had until then been on the periphery of the global trading system. Its trade with the world had been modest.

The front page of the Post on November 11, 2001

Tariffs on goods in China, averaging 32 per cent in 1992, were among the highest in the world. Renegotiation of “conditional most favoured nation” trading status and of garment quotas under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement was always nerve-jangling.

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.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}Inside Out | As China marks 20 years of accession to the WTO, what of the trade body’s vitality and relevance?

Inside Out | As China marks 20 years of accession to the WTO, what of the trade body’s vitality and relevance?