Tough China trade Doha Stance Likely Due To Several Factors, Analysts Say
世纪互联
Analysts this week offered a wide range of explanations for why China last week opted to join India in blocking a global deal
china trade on agriculture and non-agricultural market access modalities over the extent of an special agricultural safeguard that would protect developing countries from surging imports.
www.sohu.comTheir assessments range from Chinese fear of rural instability in the absence of a strong agricultural safeguard to a Chinese desire not to sacrifice its developing-country leadership for the Doha negotiations, whose successful conclusion it considered a long shot.
U.S.
china trade statistics Representative Susan Schwab said on July 31 she was uncertain if the resolution of the special safeguard would have led ministers to successfully tackle the other outstanding issues. The ministerial collapsed on July 29.
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Another reason China may have opposed the deal is because it wanted to preserve its alliance with India and other developing countries in anticipation of the expected climate change negotiation with the West in coming years, said Wing Thye Woo, a senior associate at the Brookings Institution.
China’s leadership may have viewed tariff reductions available via the Doha round as “illusory” in light of the probable future U.S. and European Union demands for emission-related carbon taxes on certain Chinese exports if their producers did not take sufficient action to curb greenhouse gases, he explained. “When it comes to the climate change dialogue, they would need the support of the other developing countries in proposing an alternative to the climate change formula that will come [from developed countries],” Woo said.
One U.S. private-sector source expressed puzzlement over the perceived clumsiness with which China handled the Doha round negotiations in Geneva last week. “China has sat back and done nothing in Doha, and when they finally stick their head up they get blamed for the failure,” he said. “That’s not great negotiating — it’s either being manipulated by the Indians or dropping the ball from lack of attention” due to the focus on the Olympics.
The fight over the special agriculture safeguard for developing countries began after World
china trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy proposed a draft modalities outline on July 25. Senior U.S. officials initially described China as not saying much but seemingly not interested in blocking progress, but that changed over the next two days (Inside US-China Trade, July 30).
www.google.cnChina moved toward opposing the draft modalities outline after Brazil abandoned its opposition, leaving India as the only developing-country member of the “Group of Seven” delegations to formally oppose the document.
Former Canadian World
china asean trade Organization Ambassador John Weekes said last week that, in his view, China had agreed to go along with India on opposing the special safeguards mechanism because it had long felt it had gotten a “raw deal” for bound agricultural tariffs during its accession by being forced to lower them too much.
Chinese Ambassador Sun Zhenyu told the WTO’s
china trade Negotiations Committee on July 28 that China’s average bound agriculture tariffs are 15.2 percent, lower than Canada and Japan. On industrial goods, China’s average bound tariff is 9 percent, he said.
