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Meeting of the Working Party on the Accession of
China
6 March 1997
Summing Up By the Chairman
I would like to welcome China and all the delegations to this, the third
meeting of the Working Party on the accession of China. Today's meeting
has been preceded by informal consultations which have taken place
during the past two days. These multilateral consultations followed
bilateral meetings between China and a number of WTO members. Additional
bilaterals have taken place this week and will continue next week.
Participants in the informal multilateral process worked on both the
revised annexes submitted by China (WT/ACC/CHN/5) and on the text of the
draft protocol itself. The new annexes submitted by China were welcomed
by the group and recognized as offering an improved basis for
negotiations. With respect to some annexes, in particular Annex 4 on
price controls and Annex 6 on export duties, it is my feeling that good
progress was made. For others, I am confident that progress can also be
made in the course of the next meetings of the Working Party. The
present draft annexes of subsidies and statutory inspection continue to
present major problems, and a basis for meaningful negotiation in these
areas is still to be developed. Measures to be taken to overcome the
difficulties in these areas include increased technical support to China
in order to develop more satisfactory texts in line with WTO
requirements in terms of notification and transparency.
The informal group went through the text of the Draft Protocol with a
view to:
-- simplifying the provisions and eliminating redundancies wherever
possible;
-- filling in time frames left open, on the basis of proposals
introduced since December 1994;
-- confirming consensus which had emerged since that time on some
issues; and
-- developing new consensus on resolving other issues.
Among the most notable results of this latest multilateral round I would
like to mention, without being exclusive, the basic consensus reached on
protocol sections dealing with the right to trade, as well as judicial
review, while noting that with respect to this latter issue one point
remains outstanding. More generally, there has been substantial progress
in developing draft texts on nondiscrimination and non-tariff measures.
Progress made regarding the Draft Protocol during this Working Party
meeting should permit us to concentrate in the upcoming sessions on some
core issues, such as balance-of- payments, safeguards, transitional
review mechanism and price comparability, in addition to finalizing
points left to be resolved from discussions in this meeting.
In summing up, the multilateral consultations this week have been
especially productive. Significant progress has been made on major
issues. Clarifications have also been made which, in my view, should
lead to further narrowing of positions and, ultimately, to achieving
overall consensus on the conditions of China's accession.
There is a clear need to build on the existing momentum, both in regard
to completing the annexes and to resolving the remaining sensitive
issues in the Draft Protocol. I trust that the next meeting of the
Working Party, which we may be able to schedule for the second part of
May, will permit us to register such progress.
This being said, I want to underline that this accession process, as in
any WTO accession, means completion of work and agreement on four
instruments, specifically, a Draft Protocol with its annexes, a Draft
Report of the Working Party, and Schedules on goods and services. We
need through sustained bilateral and multilateral discussions to
progress on all four fronts so as not to be put in a position where lack
of progress on one instrument prevents timely completion of our work. I
therefore appeal to the Chinese Delegation and Members of the Working
Party to keep this closely in mind.
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