Steadfast in Negotiations, U.S. Extends WTO Talks With China Another Day

BEIJING â€”  A high-level U.S. delegation has extended its stay by another day in a last-ditch effort to bring China into the World Trade Organization before the start of a new round of trade talks Nov. 30 in Seattle.

While the extension might ordinarily signal some new breakthrough, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky has been decidedly blunt about how slow and inconsequential the talks have been to date.

That said, negotiations with China are often protracted, with Beijing holding out until the last possible minute in a bid to wring some final concession from Washington.

“While progress has been slow thus far, because of the importance of the issue, both sides thought it would be useful to have an additional day of meetings,� Barshefsky said in a statement released late Friday in Washington.

Two days of talks were originally scheduled here this week, but this has now been stretched to four. A driving factor has been a certain amount of political will on both sides in favor of a deal.

Top-level support and advocacy will be necessary on both sides to overcome years of frustration and the opposition of U.S. and Chinese domestic interests threatened by more competition.

Barshefsky and her team were dispatched to Beijing after President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin agreed early this month to get the talks back on track. And Clinton has kept the door open despite obvious frustration.

“I have committed not to talk about the details in the talks and I won’t,� Clinton said Friday in Washington. “But there are a finite and limited number of issues over which there are still differences and they are working on it.�

The murky, protracted nature of these negotiations, petty differences over scheduling and mood swings on both sides are in many ways a hallmark of China’s entry bid, which has now dragged on for 13 years. “After all that time, what more could there be to talk about?� joked one analyst.

More bad blood was added to the mix in April when Clinton not only rejected what many saw as a generous offer by visiting Premier Zhu Rongji but also embarrassed Zhu by disclosing its contents. That was followed shortly by NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

The legacy of the April missteps lives on in this week’s negotiations, analysts say. China’s economic position has deteriorated since April, arguably making it less keen about a deal. Foreign investment and economic growth in the world’s most populous country have continued to weaken as unemployment rises. This in turn has strengthened the hand of entrenched state industries and party bosses opposed to more foreign competition.

Of further concern at both the economic and political levels is the prospect that more open borders will lead to more layoffs in the short term. This has led Beijing to suggest that its April offer is no longer a given.

The April shadow also hangs over the U.S. position. After turning down the earlier deal, the administration ideally wants to show that it got something more in the latest offer both to sell it to Congress and to justify its own seven-month delay. This has led to a lot of U.S. hand-wringing that any deal be “April-plus,� analysts say, and not “April-minus.�

In the event Beijing and Washington can pull a deal together, it still must be approved by the European Union, Canada and the rest of the 135-member WTO group. That said, the United States, followed closely by the EU, has been China’s toughest critic. Japan, which favors a more accommodating approach, has already said this year that Beijing should be a member with its current offer.

One of the key sticking points that has dogged the U.S.-China talks that presents a last-minute quandary is whether China should enter the WTO as a developed or a developing nation, a distinction that greatly affects the level of protection China can keep and the pace at which it can implement its reforms.

Washington, meanwhile, wants China to open its sheltered telecommunications and financial services sectors. China has countered that the U.S. cares far more about its own parochial interests than furthering free trade. But global trade talks are about nothing if not parochial interests.