Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
03
China's WTO accession
The mpact on ts agrcultural sector
and gran polcy
Feng Lu
China's WTO accession was approved on 27 September 2001, and China finally
joined the WTO at the annual Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in November
2001. The further ntegraton of Chna nto the nternatonal economy wll
undoubtedly brng profound economc and socal changes to Chna. The ssue
has been wdely debated n Chna n recent years. Of the mplcatons of
China's accession to the WTO, the impact on China's agricultural sector is
of partcular mportance as t lnks to senstve ssues such as rural ncome
and food security. As a result, the significance of the debate on the issue of
the agrcultural mpact has been far beyond that suggested by the share of
agrculture n Chna's GDP or ts external trade.
China's WTO entry commitments in the agricultural sector
By 2001, China had concluded bilateral agreements with every nation except
Mexico
1
but only the US-Chna Agreement was avalable to the publc. In
principle, China's commitments could differ from agreement to agreement.
The WTO Secretarat's task was to combne the best commtments from each
and aggregate them nto a sngle combned text. The combned text would
become the basis for the final documents for China's WTO accession, and
all member countries would have recourse to the combined text. However,
as for the agricultural commitments, it is widely believed that the US-China
Agreement has addressed most of the mportant ssues n ths sector.
