Mr President, the accession of the People’s Republic of China to the WTO is, without doubt, one of the major ventures and experiments of our time. The People’s Republic of China, which is still a country formally governed by a Communist party, is now to be a part of what might be called the stronghold of the free market economy, the WTO. If the Commission is to be believed, that is a huge victory from the EU’s point of view. It is said that this is a one-way market opening process. It is thought that, for the EU, China’s accession to the WTO will signal an enormous gain in enforceable rights, with no significant change in the EU’s own commitments towards China. It is really quite a one-way process that is described in the Commission’s proposal. China must adapt. The EU does not need to do very much. Certain China-specific quantitative restrictions are to be phased out. However, these are of relatively little importance. If the Commission’s description in Paragraph 13 is to be believed, accession to the WTO will be good for China’s economy. I have a number of doubts on that score. Clearly, the Commission has to look after the EU’s interests, but the issue is whether, in the era of globalisation, we might not have passed the point at which trade policy could be judged as if it were a football match, in which winning is everything and there is complete indifference to how things are for the other side. I therefore think it is quite remarkable that, in its proposal, the Commission does not say so much as a word to hint that accession might nonetheless lead to problems for the other party, namely the People’s Republic of China. I must briefly relate a number of facts to indicate that there may be certain problems for this large, but, nonetheless, still underdeveloped, country. Criticisms are being made in China. When, in connection with my official visit as chairman of the European Parliament’s China delegation, I recently visited China, I was able, on the fringes of this visit, to meet authors of books which are very highly critical of China’s accession to the WTO. Both books are published by legal publishing houses and, obviously, in Chinese. One of the books is known in English translation as Collision: Globalisation and China’s Reality Choice. The author, who is an economist at Beijing Aeronautic University, maintains that China will lose to a system that is dominated by transnational companies. His sympathies are with the lower social classes, he says, and he believes that Chinese companies will be swallowed by transnational giants. This will hit those groups of people in China which have little in the way of wealth. His main argument is that China is not ready for accession to the WTO. The Chinese economy is not strong enough, and it will be the poorest classes that will have to pay a heavy price in the form of unemployment and social insecurity. This book attracted a certain amount of attention in China when it was published last year. A relevant article was published in the journal belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and the book received many positive reviews. The second book is known in English as China in the Shadow of Globalisation and constitutes a warning to the effect that accession to the WTO might cause China to split into five parts. That is one of the things that the Chinese leaders fear most. The fact that the chaos which might result from accession to the WTO could lead to the division of the country touches a sensitive point in China’s understanding of itself. In spite of the fact that China is not a democracy and, to put it mildly, does not allow complete freedom of expression, and despite the fact that the Chinese government is in favour of accession to the WTO, a book of this type was nonetheless allowed to be published. That means that there is uneasiness, considerable uneasiness, in Chinese society. This uneasiness is, in all likelihood, about the possible consequences within the governing party, too. You only have to log on to the Internet. There are many web sites: China Online, South China Morning Post and such like. There is a lot of information about what different commentators, including those outside China, believe might happen because of accession to the WTO. China Online reported, for example, in August of this year, that approximately 18 per cent of the total number of employees within the State sector are estimated to be surplus to requirements. It is said that they will be still more surplus to requirements following accession to the WTO. Unemployment in city areas is already estimated at over 15 per cent. This report from China Online also maintains that unemployment will increase further in connection with accession to the WTO. The prospects for new jobs are very limited because those who are made redundant are often older, unqualified workers. According to China Online, an estimated 30% of the agricultural labour force is surplus to requirements, meaning that 120 million farmers will have to look for jobs in the cities. Agriculture was one of the most important areas raised by China in the negotiations. China received certain concessions. Many commentators still believe, however, that accession will lead to enormous changes in the countryside and have enormous consequences when China is opened up to imports of food and agricultural products from, for example, the United States. China has nine hundred million people employed within agriculture. The Chinese government itself, which does not exactly exaggerate the difficulties, estimates that, because of cheaper grain imports, 9.7 million farmers will lose their jobs within seven years of Beijing joining the WTO. I could go on at length quoting and referring to different sources indicating the difficulties for China, but I think these examples suffice. The point of the quotations is that I, again, wanted to emphasise how odd I think it is that the Commission should be presenting the Council and Parliament with a document in which there is not a single word to suggest that accession to the WTO might lead to difficulties in the world’s most heavily populated country. That is an odd information policy, in my opinion. China’s accession to the WTO may, of course, lead to problems for ourselves, too, if stability in China is seriously undermined. What conclusions do I draw, then? I do not draw the conclusion that we must say ‘no’. Even if China is not a democracy in our sense of the word, I think it would be unreasonable for us to try to assume the responsibilities of the Chinese government and say that, what the Chinese government has judged to be correct might, in actual fact, be wrong. Nonetheless, I believe that we should be aware of the fact that we are embarking upon an incredibly risky game. It places great demands upon European companies to be responsible and not misuse the opportunities they are given when they now go into China with the freedom granted to them by the latter’s membership of the WTO. In spite of this serious criticism and these serious misgivings, I naturally recommend that we vote in favour of China’s membership. I only have a small amount of speaking time left to devote to Taiwan. That was intentional, because Taiwan is in a quite different situation. Taiwan is a developed modern democracy, a developed modern market economy and industrial state and the world’s tenth largest trading power. I cannot see any real problems with Taiwan’s accession to the WTO. We are concerned there, with an entirely different set of problems with which no comparison can be drawn. Taiwan will be accorded a local collective agreement with China and become a member the day after China has become a member. I have no comment other than that we naturally ought to vote in favour of Taiwan’s membership.

Political group: Verts-ALE