'China can live without GATT membership'

BEIJING (Reuter): China wants to join GATT but will not take membership at any price and can live without the world free trade body if necessary, an official newspaper said yesterday.

"With or without access to GATT, China will emerge as a powerful global competitor," the China Daily quoted a senior official as saying.

The newspaper said Li Zhongzhou, deputy director general for international relations at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, ruled out accepting membership of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade at any cost.

"The bottom line is equal treatment," Li told the newspaper.

"China hopes to obtain unconditional Most Favored Nation (MFN) treatment equivalent to that accorded to all other contracting parties by participating in GATT," Li said.

"It is important to point out that this is the fundamental international principle applied universally, not a privilege as claimed by certain political arguments."

The official newspaper criticized the United States for its approach on MFN for China.

Washington insists China makes progress on human rights before it will renew the low-tariff policy for Beijing this year.

Without MFN, Chinese goods would not be competitive in the huge and important U.S. market.

The China Daily said China believed the U.S. approach "runs counter to the spirit of GATT".

Li pledged that even if China failed to join GATT, its policy of economic reform and opening to the world would continue.

But he warned that if China failed to get membership in the world body, countries that wanted access to the huge Chinese domestic market would have to negotiate individually with Beijing.

"The world trade community has a choice between accepting China as an equal trading partner by granting it GATT membership, or competing for access to the Chinese market on a reciprocal basis."

China's bid to join GATT has been stalled by Western objections, particularly from the United States, that Beijing has not yet made enough of a transition from a socialist-style planned economy to a capitalist-style market system.