Commerce minister elaborates China's stance on WTO trade talks

2005-12-15 From Xinhua Net

Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai on Wednesday called for special treatment to the developing members of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

"The talks should give developing countries real and tangible benefits to boost their confidence in the Doha Round talks," said Bo, who is attending the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference here.

China supports the idea that the Doha Round talks should reach a balanced agreement, which he said will be conducive to the development of developing economies.

"Currently, significant imbalance does exist between developed countries and developing countries and such imbalance has affected the healthy development of the world economy," said the Chinese minister.

Bo stressed that agriculture is at the core of the Doha Round as 2.5 of the 2.6 billion farmers in the world are living in developing countries and most of them are living in poverty.

"If the poor rural population is exposed to more negative impacts, disasters could be triggered. By then, rich countries will not be free of trouble either," he said.

Speaking at the plenary session of the Hong Kong meeting, Bo said China has made remarkable contributions to world trade despite a relatively short WTO membership and appealed the Geneva- based organization to address the special concerns of its new members.

China's tariffs on industrial products have been brought down to 9 percent from 42.9 percent since its entry into the WTO in 2001, he said.

"The tariffs on agricultural products have also been cut from 54 percent to 15.3 percent in 2005, whereas the world average is as high as 62 percent," Bo said.

Launched in the Qatar i capital in 2001, the Doha Round aims to lift barriers to trade across the world and reduce poverty in developing countries.

With a rural population of 740 million, China is still a developing country and its per capita GDP was 1,200 US dollars last year, which equals to only one-thirtieth of the United States , Minister Bo said.

China has managed to lift 200 million people out of poverty during the past two decades, but nearly 200 million people in the country are still living below the poverty line of one dollar per day, which is set by the World Bank.

The minister also noted that China's imports volume is expected to reach 600 billion US dollars in 2005.

"China has provided a big market for the world with its imports this year estimated at 600 billion US dollars," he said.

China's imports volume was 561.4 billion US dollars in 2004, compared with 240 billion US dollars in 2001.

Bo is here for the Dec. 13-18 WTO Hong Kong meeting, which was attended by 5,800 delegates from WTO's 149 members and 2,100 representatives from non-governmental organizations worldwide.