China and the World Trade Organization - Essay Example

The main function of this body is to carry out and facilitate multilateral negotiations so as to improve the movement of goods and services in an open market and also to reduce trade barriers and such other bottlenecks, which actually bring unhealthy or poor competition in the market. It would be acting as a platform for its members to speak about their difficulties with their trading partners and in this way ultimately leading to the economic development of its members. Currently there are 145 members for WTO (The World Trade Organization and Agriculture, 2004).

So the ultimate aim of WTO is to develop the economy of all its member countries whether it is developed, developing or least developed, to ensure employment for all through better production of goods and services and better standard of living for all (The basics of WTO. 2000). China joined WTO in the year 2001. A lot of commitments were made by China while joining WTO. According to that all the imports were to be exempted from trade tariffs. There is also domestic price liberalization and thus the price of the domestic as well as international price has almost become same.

Apart from this tariff rate quotas replaced import quotas and licenses were abolished. In sectors such as telecommunications, insurance etc foreign participation was encouraged (WTO successfully concludes negotiations on China's entry, 2001). All these commitments increased transparency of China's trade regime and helped china to increase its trade volume. The volume of trade of China has increased from about $200 billion to more than $750 billion within four years after it's joining in WTO (The China Business review, 2006).

There has been a change in the items of export as well. Before 2001 agricultural produce, leather, plastic items etc were the main exports, but after 2001, it is the electrical goods, machinery, power generation equipment etc. The imports also increased considerably in these 4 years and the main items include heavy equipments, machineries, vehicles and their parts etc. Export and import with United States increased to more than double during this period. China became the top supplier of consumer goods.

The trade is increasing nearly 29% annually. Thus it could be seen that after joining WTO, China has made tremendous progress in its trade especially to United States and other developed countries. It has become the fourth largest economy in the world by the year 2006 (Yong, 2009).Thus the World Trade Organization which was formed as a result of increased globalization and liberalization, in order to facilitate trade across the countries has resulted in the development of economies not only of the developed countries such as US, UK, Germany etc, it has also helped the developed countries such as China to make tremendous progress in the trade and economy.

Works CitedThe basics of WTO [online] Available at: http://www.iisd.org/trade/handbook/3_2.htm 2000. (accessed on 12th June 2009)The China Business review [online] Available at: http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/public/0609/ChinaData.pdf 2006