HANDBOOK ON CHINA'S WTO ACCESSION AND ITS IMPACTS
by Ching Cheong & Ching Hung-Yee
Ching Cheong is a seasoned journalist, with over 25 years of experience in reporting political and economic news of the Greater China area. He has been in the profession ever since he graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 1973. He is one of the rare journalists in Hong Kong with residential experience in all the four major Chinese communities of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. This gives him a strong understanding of the vast diversity of the Chinese world. As one of the early foreign correspondents in Beijing (1981–1989) he witnessed the entire process of the reform and opening up of China, and the joy and pain that attended the process. This was also a period when China assumed world prominence and he witnessed the flurry of state visits to Beijing by top leaders of the world, like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr, Henry Kissinger and Mikhail Gorbachev. During his stay in Beijing, he also witnessed the difficult negotiations between China and Britain, and China and Portugal, on the resumption of the sovereignty of Hong Kong and Macau, respectively. He was posted to Taiwan (1998–2000) by The Straits Times, the largest English language newspaper in Southeast Asia, and witnessed in full the democratization of Taiwan which led to the peaceful transfer of power from an authoritarian regime to a popularly elected one.
Ching Hung-Yee started with a trading career, specializing in trading of raw materials involving the China market. She became qualified as a Certified Documentary Credit Specialist in 2001. Her experience with the China market inspired her to turn to China law. She obtained a Bachelor's degree in China Law conferred by the Peking University in 1992 and a Master of Law (Chinese and Comparative Law) conferred by the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong in 2001. Currently she is working as a consultant.
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.
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