CHINA’S CONFORMITY TO THE WTO: PROGRESS AND CHALLENGES
Friday 13th and Saturday 14th July 2007
[HA Tank, Copland]
The Australian National University, Canberra
Convenors: Ross Garnaut, Chunlai Chen and Ligang Song
The 19th Annual Conference of the Association for Chinese Economic Studies Australia (ACESA) in conjunction with China Economy and Business Program, Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University
China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 is widely regarded as a major milestone in the development of the Chinese economy as well as the multilateral trading system. There is no doubt that the accession has led to deepened integration of the Chinese economy into the global economy and moved China towards a more rules-based economic system. However, at the same time, meeting China’s commitments to the WTO under the protocol of its accession raises enormous problems and challenges to China, its trading partners and the WTO itself.
China’s full conformity to the WTO is strategically important for China, its trading relations with others and the multilateral trading system. This focused conference will bring together scholars, government officials and representatives from international organisations to discuss the key issues and challenges surrounding China’s conformity to the WTO five years after China has become a formal member of the organisation.
The following sessions are organised to reflect the main focuses of the conference:
1. Reviewing the implementation of China’s accession commitments including its policy reform, conformity-assessment measures and implementation, and market access and competition policy, intellectual property and dispute settlement.
2. Looking at sectoral adjustments such as agriculture, manufacturing, resources effects of greater Chinese trade specialisation on global markets, and services (financial services, insurance and banking sector reform, telecommunications and e-commerce, professional services regulation, distribution and logistics).
3. Discussing the expansion of Chinese trade and its impact on regional as well as global structural adjustments through trade and investment flows (trade in final products as well as components trade, new patterns of foreign direct investments, regional economic integration, and China's 'going out' strategy).
4. Assessing various regional and bilateral trading arrangements in which China has engaged in the context of China’s conformity to the WTO and its long-term trading interests (regional and sub-regional grouping, free trade areas and bilateral trading arrangements).
5. Discussing China’s conformity to the WTO and its challenges to the existing multilateral trading rules and the role of China in further enhancing the multilateral trade negotiations and reforming and strengthening the multilateral trading system (transition phase and safeguards against import surges, anti-dumping measures and dispute settlement, etc.).
A feature of this conference is to organize a forum for graduate students who are working on Chinese economy to present their work at the Conference.
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