Fourth 1+6 Roundtable: Press Conference

Thank you, Premier Li, for hosting this discussion and especially for the support that you have just expressed for the multilateral trading system. I fully subscribe to the remarks of IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank Group President David Malpass in support of the world trading system.

World economic growth is slowing sharply. A large part of the problem and a large part of the solution can be found in how international trade is dealt with.

For over 70 years, the world economy has benefitted from the multilateral trading system. No country in the history of the modern world has experienced a more dramatic positive economic transformation than has China. This could not have occurred without sweeping domestic reforms in the context of participation in the benefits of the multilateral trading system. 

The urgent task now at hand is to reform and update the global trading system. The G20 has underlined this need. Every WTO member can and must contribute to this effort. China’s contribution, as the world’s largest goods exporting country, is essential.

New frontiers of the digital economy, in many aspects of which China is a leading country, are being addressed by current WTO negotiations. Going forward, the positions that China takes, as a major economy, will shape multilateral outcomes, including with respect to new rules regarding e-commerce, fisheries subsidies, agriculture, transparency, the role of state-enterprises, or industrial subsidies. China will also be a major participant in the discussions as well as actions to help other countries follow China’s remarkable progress in lifting its people out of poverty. 

China made a major investment in the international trading system in its process of accession to the WTO. Now a further investment is needed by all. The next milestone is the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Nur-Sultan Kazakhastan in June 2020 when the world will be expecting progress toward reform of the WTO, improving its rules as well as its rule-making capability, assuring the future enforceability of rules, maintaining and improving its capacity to settle disputes, and increasing the WTO’s ability to perform in the roles that the members have entrusted and will entrust to the WTO as an institution.

There is a clear opportunity as well as a need to tackle systemic challenges facing the world economy. The institutions represented here need to work together, are working together, and will work together, to address these challenges.

China’s leadership and full participation are necessary if there is to be success. These are testing times. But I am optimistic that the spirit in evidence today in this meeting can and will lead to an improved, more effective multilateral trading system with widespread benefits.

I thank China and Premier Li for providing this opportunity to come together and express support for international cooperation, not least for maintaining and improving the multilateral trading system.