On December 8, the High-End Forum on the 20th Anniversary of China’s Entry into the World Trade Organization and the concurrent 20th Annual Conference on WTO and China took place in Beijing. China’s accession to the WTO has benefitted both China and the world, participants observed.

Over the past 20 years, China has earnestly fulfilled its WTO accession commitments, and actively integrated into economic globalization, with unparalleled achievements in economic and trade development. The country has become a source of stability and power for world economic growth.

Jiang Qingzhe, secretary of the Party Committee of the University of International Business and Economics, said that entering the WTO has changed both China and the world. Since its accession to the WTO, China has taken a series of opening up measures, including lowering tariffs, opening up the service industry, and eliminating non-tariff barriers, which has not only promoted China’s own development, but also benefited many trading partners, including other developing countries and the world’s least developed countries.

Liu Yuanchun, vice president of Renmin University of China, believes that entry into the WTO has enabled China to enter the international division of labor system and create a trade surplus that has lasted for more than a decade. More importantly, through the expansion of external demand, the great transformation of China’s dual economy system has accelerated. At the same time, through external demand’s impact on both the supply and demand sides of China’s economy, China’s internal cycle has been fully activated.

“The greatest success, over the past 20 years since China’s entry into the WTO, is that China has laid the institutional foundation for opening up and promoted reform, development, and innovation with opening up,” said Former Minister of Commerce Chen Deming.

In accordance with the requirements of multilateral trade agencies, and China’s more than 20 years of experience in self-exploration, the country has re-examined nearly 3,000 regulatory documents and rules of the central government and its departments, and more than 190,000 policy regulations of local governments. This fully demonstrates that China’s opening up has entered an institutional stage, Chen said.

Li Minglin, vice president of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, pointed out that sorting out the 20 years of experiences since China’s accession to the WTO has clearly revealed the WTO’s role in China’s reform and opening up. At the same time, the world can see clearly that China’s achievements after its entry into the WTO are mainly thanks to the fact that China has fulfilled its accession commitments and abided by the WTO’s rules. As such, the country has been able to resolve challenges and seize opportunities.

“While we develop ourselves, we also benefit the world,” Li said.

Going forward, Liu suggested that China should make use of its super market scale to fully introduce participation from foreign entities, so that China’s financial pricing capacity and pricing capacities of various core elements can be comprehensively improved.

At present, the COVID-19 pandemic has made international trade even more fragile, and trade protectionism and unilateralism are constantly rising, which urgently requires us to achieve a higher level of reform and opening up, said Gao Anming, vice president of China International Communications Group.

Yi Xiaozhun, chief adviser of the Network on International Trade and Investment System, believes that the multilateral trading system is currently experiencing the most difficult moment in its history of more than 70 years, and China should strive to provide more public goods for the members of the WTO and promote win-win cooperation under the multilateral framework by taking the initiative to open up the market.