China's admission good news in difficult times for WTO

DOHA - China has been admitted to the World Trade Organisation, capping a 15-year drive to join the rules-based trading system.

The move gives foreign companies, from banks to movie studios, a wider opening in the world's most populous market.

China's membership was unanimously ratified by the 142-nation WTO at a meeting in the emirate of Qatar.

The vote makes the country of 1.3 billion consumers the WTO's largest member and provides a boost to the group as it struggles to expand trade.

"The accession of China into the WTO puts the 'world' into the World Trade Organisation," said French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius.

China's membership, to become official in 30 days, is expected to be followed by Taiwan's admission, bringing China's main political rival yet biggest foreign investor into the Geneva-based WTO.

Companies from Tyson Foods of the United States, the world's biggest chicken processor, to Allianz AG, Europe's second-largest insurer, are among those likely to see business expand as China fulfils pledges to tear down trade and investment barriers.

China's participation in the WTO was assured in September, when the US and European Union set aside differences over American International Group's access to the insurance market and Mexico agreed to limit punitive tariffs on Chinese goods.

For China, stronger competition from foreign companies threatens to force unprofitable companies out of business and cost thousands of jobs, a difficulty acknowledged in Doha by Chinese Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng.

"This will inevitably exert a widespread and far-reaching impact on China's economy and on the world economy in the new century," Shi said.

The vote ensures that at least some good news will come out of the WTO meeting in Doha, which is intended to start the process of dismantling trade and investment barriers in industries from food to finance to architectural services.

Disputes among the US, EU, Japan and developing countries over food-export subsidies, patent protection and environmental regulations threaten to derail the talks.