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China shifts focus

to APEC from WTO

BEIJING: China is shifting its lobbying efforts away from trying to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) towards gaining more recognition in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, a newspaper said on Sunday.

"China is currently putting its main strength into APEC and temporarily cooling the question of entry into the WTO," the China Trade News said in an edition seen in Beijing on Sunday.

The newspaper said China is shifting its focus because its chances of joining the WTO this year were slim.

"Because the United States created all sorts of obstacles, hopes of China's 'rejoining' (the WTO) before the end of 1995 became a bubble," the newspaper said.

"Prospects of (China) joining the WTO in 1996 are very uncertain," it added.

China is already a member of APEC, an economic forum seeking to establish a free trade zone by the year 2020.

The forum groups 18 members from Asia and North and South America, also including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.

Last month, China's Vice Foreign Trade Minister Long Yongtu said Beijing was not rushing to join the WTO at the expense of its own basic economic interests, however.

China says it has already done enough in opening up its economy to the outside world with market reforms to be admitted to the world trade body now.

Countries opposed to China's entry have said Beijing had still to dismantle some of its longstanding non-tariff barriers to trade like quotas and licences.

Resistance to China's quick return has come not only from the United States. The European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are among powers who have sought deeper trade reform as the price of entry.

But Washington has taken the toughest line, warning last month that U.S. President Bill Clinton might not be able to renew China's "most-favoured-nation" trade status later this year unless it addressed U.S. political and economic concerns.

China's Ambassador in Geneva Wu Jianmin said last month he accepted that WTO entry could not come this year because the Clinton administration could not afford to approve it in presidential election year.-Reuter