PRESS
RELEASE: PRESS/TPRB/262
19 and 21 April 2006
TRADE POLICY REVIEW: CHINA
Economic reform has produced impressive results but important challenges remain
China's gradual economic reforms have opened the economy to international trade and investment and have made it one of the fastest growing in the world, with a nearly nine-fold increase in GDP per capita since 1978, according to a WTO Secretariat report on the trade policies and practices of China.
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Ongoing trade and structural reforms, given added impetus by China's
membership of the WTO since 2001, have made it the world's third largest
trader and one of the largest FDI recipients. These reforms have also
reduced the proportion of China's population living in poverty from 73%
in 1990 to 32% in 2003. At the same time, however, income disparity has
increased, especially between the coastal and inland regions and between
urban and rural areas. Trade and investment barriers have declined
considerably, in part due to WTO commitments. Nevertheless, the report
notes that the Government continues to intervene to “manage” trade,
including for domestic supply considerations.
Continued structural reform will increase unemployment in certain
sectors and over 100 million jobs will need to be created over the next
decade. The report suggests it may be necessary to reappraise the
current policy to attract investment to export-oriented capital
intensive manufacturing and to place greater emphasis on removing
impediments to the expansion of the services sector. The Government also
needs to accelerate its efforts to raise the quality of the labour force
in order to move away from traditional low-skilled, labour-intensive
industries into higher value-added production. Other challenges include
bottlenecks in infrastructure as well as the continued need to
restructure the financial sector and capital markets by making them more
market oriented.
The WTO report, along with a policy statement by the Government, will be the basis for the Trade Policy Review (TPR) by the Trade Policy Review Body of the WTO.
The following documents are available in MS Word format.
- Secretariat report
> Contents and summary observations (16 pages, 194KB)
> Economic environment (28 pages, 829KB)
> Trade and investment regimes (31 pages, 327KB)
> Trade policies and practices by measure (101 pages, 1238KB)
> Trade policies by sector (94 pages, 910KB)
> Appendix tables (49 pages, 1968KB)
- Government report (21 pages,
145KB)
- Revisions of the above documents may be issued approximately
2 weeks after the meeting.
- Chairperson's concluding remarks
- Minutes
of the meeting are available approximately 6 weeks after the meeting.
- Questions and answers by WTO Members are available approximately 6 weeks after the meeting.
Note back to top
Trade Policy Reviews are an exercise, mandated in the WTO agreements, in which member countries’ trade and related policies are examined and evaluated at regular intervals. Significant developments that may have an impact on the global trading system are also monitored. For each review, two documents are prepared: a policy statement by the government of the member under review, and a detailed report written independently by the WTO Secretariat. These two documents are then discussed by the WTO’s full membership in the Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB). These documents and the proceedings of the TPRB’s meetings are published shortly afterwards.
Print copies of previous TPR publications are available for sale from the WTO Secretariat, Centre William Rappard, 154 rue de Lausanne, 1211 Genève 21 and through the on-line bookshop.
The TPR publications are also available from our co-publisher Bernan Press, 4611-F Assembly Drive, Lanham, MD 20706-4391, United States.
Schedule of forthcoming reviews back to top
United Arab Emirates: 24 and 26 April 2006
Uruguay: 17 and 19 May 2006
Iceland: 7 and 9 June 2006