China’s accession to the WTO, China was engaged in fulfilling a number of“major
and bold”WTO commitments made in theProtocol on China’s Accession to the
WTOand in theReport of the Working Partyand was present mostly as a“low-key
new member”at negotiations by adopting the“4L”strategy^2 ; China was ridiculed
as a“coward”. In July, 2008, China attended the seven-party small-scope consul-
tation in a small ministerial conference for thefirst time and thus it was seen to enter
“the core level for developing WTO rules for thefirst time”. Afterwards, China
made a few adjustments and took on an active attitude in advantageousfields. Later,
China became one of thefive principle members regarding intellectual property
issues and one of the members on the text-drafting team, played a constructive role
in negotiations and changed into an“active promoter”in the Doha Round. At the
“Green Room”meeting, China experienced the process from initially boycotting,
refraining from attending and attending later, to actively attending. In general,
China’s participation in the Doha Round was a process of continuous participation,
learning and improvement.
The EU was one of the main advocators and initiators in the Doha Round. As
early as the 1996 WTO Singapore Ministerial Conference, the EU and the devel-
oped countries, including Japan, launched research on four issues including trade
and investment, trade and competition policy, transparency of government pro-
curement, trade facilitation (“Singapore issues”) with an attempt to consider them as
main issues in the new round of negotiations. The Singapore issues were opposed
by most of the developing members. Disagreements among all parties led to the
failure of the 2003 Cancun Ministerial Conference. In the Doha Round“Framework
Agreement”decision concluded in July, 2004, three issues, except trade facilitation,
were not discussed in the Doha package negotiations. As one of the leading parties
in the multilateral trade system for several decades, the EU had complete and clear
conceptions and goals concerning the main issues involved in new Doha Round of
negotiations.“Interest deficit”resulting from the exclusion of the Singapore issues
gave rise to a“leadership deficit”for the EU to some extent. However, on the
whole, the EU was still one of the real leading parties at the stages of initiating,
conducting and resuming the Doha Round, but there was a certain gap between
desire to lead and capability.
6.1.2 Main Negotiation Appeals
China participated in negotiations concerning various issues; as one of the“recent
new members”, China asserted that it had fulfilled substantial concession commit-
ments made on it in negotiations concerning its accession to the WTO, and it was
difficult for China to accept concession obligations being the same as those of other
(^2) Namely, less: smaller scope; lower: fewer obligations; longer: longer period; later: lower exe-
cution. See Zhang ( 2008 ).
6 China-EU Relations in the Context of Global Trade Governance 119