Trade Liberalization in China's Accession to the World Trade Organization

Ianchovichina, Elena ; Martin, Will

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESSION;    ACCESSION AGREEMENT;    ACCESSION NEGOTIATIONS;    ACCESSION PACKAGE;    ACCESSION PROCESS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2623
RP-ID  :  WPS2623

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Before reform, China's trade wasdominated by a few foreign trade corporations withmonopolies on the trade of specific ranges of products.Planners could control imports through these corporations sothere was little need for conventional instruments such astariffs, quotas, and licenses. Trade reforms increased therange of enterprises eligible to trade in specificcommodities and led to the development of indirect new tradeinstruments, such as duty exemptions. Duty exemptions almostcompletely liberalized the imports of intermediate inputsused to produce exports and investment goods used in jointventures with foreign enterprises. Comprehensiveliberalization measures in China's World TradeOrganization (WTO) accession package will help ease thisproblem as tariff reduction reduces the costs of domesticinputs to exporters. WTO commitments will also lead to theabolition of most nontariff barriers and of quotas ontextiles and clothing. With accession, China's share ofworld exports may almost double between 1995 and 2005 - anestimate that is smaller than those found in studies that donot incorporate duty exemptions. (Duty exemptions were aform of partial liberalization, so any further reduction inprotection will boost trade volume less than some estimate.)With reform, labor-intensive industries are expected to growmost, especially exports of apparel. Wages of unskilledworker should rise.