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Change Your Life! |
Premier promises `huge opportunities' with China in WTO |
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May 11, 2000 SHANGHAI, MAY 10 (AP) - Trying to rekindle enthusiasm for investing in China, Premier Zhu Rongji on Wednesday promised "huge opportunities" with more reform and World Trade Organization membership.
In a speech to Chinese and foreign business leaders, Zhu said WTO membership would revitalize state-dominated industries and open them to foreign and private Chinese initiative.
Zhu is in charge of completing China's 14-year-old campaign to win WTO membership. With the European Union the only major economy left to give approval, China is expected to join the international rule-setting body later this year.
"Huge business opportunities in China belong not only to Chinese entrepreneurs but also to far-sighted and courageous businessmen from around the world," Zhu said.
The multibillion-dollar torrent of investment flowing into China has slowed in recent years. Foreign companies are unhappy at low profits and the uncertainty of shifting legal and regulatory conditions. Some have scaled back investment plans and a handful have pulled out altogether.
Zhu acknowledged "a lot of difficulties and challenges" facing reform. He noted a recent economic slump that has cut growth in farm incomes and left consumer demand so weak that prices have been falling for 30 months.
But he pointed with pride to a 39.1 percent jump in imports in the first quarter of the year and increased profits at some state companies. Zhu has been in charge of overhauling money-losing state industry - a process that has shut thousands of struggling firms and cost millions of jobs.
Zhu has had to contend with internal government resistance to his economic program. Lower-level officials want to protect local companies, while economic nationalists oppose the extensive market-opening concessions made by Zhu to win U.S. support for Chinese membership in the WTO.
About 1,000 people attended Zhu's upbeat speech on the opening night of a conference on business in Asia sponsored by the New York-based Asia Society.
Zhu didn't offer any new initiatives to attract foreign business. But he pointed to areas that he said WTO membership would open to foreign competitors, including banking, telecommunications and insurance.
He repeated official projections of 7 percent annual growth over the next decade, and said China would need huge investment in infrastructure - more opportunity for foreign companies.
"To open up the Chinese market will become an important factor for world economic prosperity," Zhu said.
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