World enlightenment in the twenty years since China's accession to the WTO

Source: Economic Reference Newspaper

20 years is enough to make the dancing teenager grow into a majestic and mature age, and it is also enough to make a big country achieve a magnificent turnaround and become more mature and open. On December 11, 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), opening a magnificent chapter in China on the WTO stage. Over the past 20 years, China has actively integrated into the world market, created development miracles, demonstrated extraordinary development wisdom and strength, and contributed profound development enlightenment to the world.

In the 20 years since china joined the WTO, China has told the world that development is the last word and openness is a winning technique.

In the past 20 years, China's total economic volume has risen from 6th to 2nd in the world, trade in goods has risen from 6th to 1st in the world, trade in services has risen from 11th to 2nd in the world, and outward direct investment has risen from 26th to 1st in the world...

Thanks to wider and wider market access and opening up, China is deeply embedded in the global value chain, more Chinese enterprises break through the barriers of the old system, independently participate in international trade and investment, and more foreign enterprises can enter the new economic realm and show their ambitions in the Chinese market.

Just as many foreign dignitaries have said, the 20 years since China's accession to the WTO have proved that China has made great strides in economic and social development, and that expanding opening up has ultimately promoted China's rapid development.

The rapid development has given China the conditions to take the initiative to expand opening up at a higher starting point, promote the expansion of multilateral economic and trade networks, promote the efficient allocation of Chinese and foreign resources, and enable thousands of Chinese and foreign market entities to use the multilateral stage such as the WTO to show dazzling creative vitality and entrepreneurial spirit.

In the 20 years since china joined the WTO, China has told the world that efficiency comes from market competition, and fairness depends on policy checks and balances.

Some people say that joining the WTO is a double-edged sword. Lee Chang-yong, director of the Asia-Pacific department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), pointed out that free trade as a whole will promote growth and improve social welfare, but there will also be some people who are negatively affected by trade, and policymakers have not put much effort to compensate and protect them, which is the reason for the current opposition to globalization and free trade.

In this regard, China has actively used policy tools such as redistribution to properly handle the relationship between efficiency and fairness, so that the WTO accession dividend will benefit more ordinary people and small and micro enterprises, and effectively hedge the challenge of differentiation.

Through strategies such as industrial poverty alleviation, China has cleverly transformed the dividends of WTO accession into achievements in poverty reduction. Simon Manley, Britain's Ambassador to the WTO and the United Nations Office at Geneva, believes that trade growth is one of the main drivers of China's economic growth, which has helped lift millions of people out of poverty.

Peng Runnian, a senior researcher at Bard College in the United States, said that China's policy of putting the people first in economic governance and other aspects has achieved remarkable success. By curbing monopolies and speculation, boosting support for small businesses and promoting low carbonization, China is creating a long-term foundation for stability, inclusion, and shared prosperity.

In the 20 years since china joined the WTO, China has told the world that there is no way out for protectionism and that only by opening up and strengthening itself must always be.

China is a beneficiary of the multilateral trading mechanism, but it is by no means a "winner." From choking on water in the sea to standing up at the head of the tide. In the 20 years since China joined the WTO, it is a process of learning to swim without fear of setbacks and learning to swim.

At the beginning of China's accession to the WTO, China faced heavy pressure in the fields of adjustment of laws and regulations, the elimination of backward production capacity, institutional reform, and reform of the foreign trade management system. In this regard, China did not complain about the world, but turned the blade inward, forged ahead, faced challenges head-on, and took the initiative to connect with the world.

Today, at a time when Protectionist tendencies in the West are on the rise, China is helping to build an open world economy as a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of international order.

As one of the most important economic events in the 21st century, the spirit of openness, self-improvement and inclusiveness carried by China's accession to the WTO will shine with lasting light, enlighten mankind to work together to cope with various development problems with a broader mind and vision, and open up a new future of win-win cooperation, openness and inclusiveness. (Fu Yunwei)