A Chinese delegation, led by chief negotiator Long Yongtu, arrived in Geneva for the Jan. 10-17 WTO negotiations to discuss multilateral issues with other WTO members. According to Nicholas R Lardy, senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in the United States, a U.S. economist well-acquainted with China affairs, the list of issues on which agreement has not been reached still appears to be fairly long. On the eve of the Working Party negotiations, Mr Lardy provided this personal list of the remaining issues (see box for an update of the Working Party session).

Do WTO laws and regulations always trump domestic laws where there is a conflict? China has gone quite a bit of the way to accepting this but there appear to remain some details to sort out.

Trading rights.

Quantitative Restrictions (QRs). Some details need to be spelled out on the coverage of Annex 3 to the protocol, which lists goods covered by QRs. Some press reports also suggest that the division of import quotas among potential suppliers, for example on cars, is still being debated among members of the working party but at least there is a concrete proposal that has attracted some support.

Anti-dumping and countervailing duties.

Export subsidies. Press reports have suggested that some members of the working party do not believe that China's notification of export subsidies, Annex 5b of the draft protocol, is complete. The parties are also debating whether China should be able to take advantage, like other developing countries, of certain minim agricultural subsidies.

Industrial policy, still under debate for basically the same reason as item 5.

Technical barriers to trade. Apparently the members of the working party are not biting on Long's suggestion that foreigners could designate which of the two Chinese existing agencies would be responsible for inspection, certification of standards etc on imports. It looks like they are holding fast to the view that the Chinese side must have one entity that subjects both domestic goods and imports to a single uniform standard.

Government procurement. It looks like members of the working party have dropped the demand that China sign on as a condition of entry but they are still trying to extract a commitment that China agree in advance to sign up at a fixed point in the future. Recall that the WTO Government Procurement Agreement is plurilateral and that only 26 countries (out of 140 members) have signed up to date. Thus the demand that China either sign up in advance or agree to sign up by a fixed date in the future as a condition of membership also could be regarded as what Long has called WTO+.

Agricultural subsidies, domestic agricultural subsidies are the key issue, i.e. this is in addition to the issue of agricultural export subsidies mentioned under 5 above.

Transitional safeguard. China is apparently trying to get some limitations placed on the use of the product specific safeguard that was included in the bilateral with the US.

Transitional review mechanism. Working party has been bargaining to get China to accept more frequent regular review of China's progress in meeting its obligations. Based on its trade volume, which is the determining criteria for frequency of review in the WTO agreement, China should be reviewed every 4 years. Working party is asking for every other year schedule. They are also asking China to agree to be reviewed on demand by any member at any time and to agree in advance to supply a great deal of data to facilitate the review. This also is WTO+.

Textile safeguard may also still be an issue. At one point press reports suggested that the Chinese side had agreed that the textile safeguard, part of the US-China bilateral, would be multilateralized to all countries instead of being available only to those countries that had previous textile bilaterals in place (that latter group is the US, EU, Canada, and Norway). However, there was also claim that China has not agreed to this or that if it had it is backing away. Anyway, this of course is already WTO+ since no other member of the WTO will be subject to a textile safeguard which allows the imposition of quotas post December 31, 2004.

Balance of payments measures, where China was resisting the demand that they swear to forgo any use of quantitative restrictions in the event of a balance of payments crisis QRs are allowed according to the "Understanding on the Balance of Payments Provisions of the GATT 1994.Ó Thus, the demand appears to fall in the category of WTO+.