Tenth Anniversary of China's, and Taiwan's Accession to WTO

choi

Keith Bradsher, Rise of a Trading Power, in 10 Years; WTO guidelines have lifted China, but also protected it. New York Times, Dec 9, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/0 ... na%20wto&st=cse

(a) Excerpt in the window of print: Retaining tariffs at a level unavailable to competing countries.

(b) Quote:

"because of special breaks and loopholes for China when it joined the WTO, it still shields its domestic markets from foreign competition much more than any other big nation

"Further, WTO rules against protectionism have made it difficult for countries in the West to limit China’s sixfold surge in exports during those 10 years, even as the Chinese flood of products has forced factory closings and layoffs elsewhere.

"The clearest example of WTO ascendance China-style may be in automobiles. Even though China’s auto manufacturing industry and car market are now both the world’s largest, China continues to shelter them behind the highest trade barriers of any large industrial economy. It retains a prohibitive tariff of 25 percent on imported cars, for example, which helps explain why imports represent only 4 percent of the light vehicles sold in China. Japan, by comparison, no longer has any tariffs on imported cars, while South Korea has an 8 percent tariff and the European Union a 10 percent tariff. The United States, meantime, has a tariff of only 2.5 percent for imported cars, minivans and sport utility vehicles.

"But trade officials say that they never expected all the terms of China’s accession agreement to last as long as they have. Instead, China and other trading nations had expected to reduce trade barriers further in the Doha Round of global trade talks. But the talks dragged on and then effectively collapsed in 2008

(c) Note:
(i) creature comforts (n; plural): "all the things that you need to feel happy and comfortable"
http://www.macmillandictionary.c ... n/creature-comforts
(ii) A Chinese summary:
英媒：中国市场开放不够. BBC Chinese, Dec 9, 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/si ... _press_review.shtml

国际先驱论坛报 International Herald Tribune is a Paris-based subsidiary of New York Times Company. So BBC is wrong to call it 英媒.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Herald_Tribune
(The Paris Herald was founded on 4 October 1887, as the European edition of the New York Herald by the parent paper's owner, James Gordon Bennett, Jr)