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Special care
for least developed urged
HONG KONG—The Chinese delegation to the sixth WTO ministerial meeting
touched on details for the first time on its long requested special
treatment to new WTO members, the Ministry of Commerce said here the
opther day.
It made a proposal that as a new member, China should have a coefficient
higher than other developing countries on the issue of non-agriculture
market access (NAMA).
During the latest round of talks, WTO members agreed to apply a
so-called “Swiss formula” when calculating tariff reduction in the NAMA.
China and other developing countries agreed with the Swiss formula with
two coefficients which are the parts of the formula that determine how
deeply tariffs are cut with one for developed and another for developing
country members.
The number in the coefficient will be the maximum level of tariff after
the tariff-cutting exercise. Thus, the lower the coefficient, the lower
the cap placed on tariffs will be.
“Besides the coefficient, the new members should be granted
flexibilities to offer less or no tariff reduction on some products,”
the ministry said.
Meanwhile, China reiterated on Friday special treatment must be given to
the least developed countries (LDCs) at the Hong Kong meeting.
The granting of duty-free and quota-free access to imports from the LDCs
is a kind of political promise of developed countries, the delegation
said.
But when giving the provision, the developing countries should have some
flexibility compared to developed economies. Progress in market access
to the LDCs was the biggest achievement made in the WTO meeting on
Friday.
Members have reached an initial agreement on granting duty-free and
quota-free market access to LDCs, although a final statement is still in
the pipeline due to different opinions in areas such as product
coverage.
Another encouraging step was that for the first time in the WTO, a
ministerial meeting was held on Friday between all the developing
country groups, including the G20, G33, the ACP (Africa, Caribbean, and
Pacific Group of States) and the LDCs.
A statement from the groups said they hoped talks would result in the
removal of the distortions that inhibit the export growth of developing
countries.
Negotiators failed to achieve measurable progress on Friday in key areas
of agricultural export subsidy and non-agricultural market access.
“There are no breakthroughs, but no breakdown either,” said WTO
spokesman Keith Rockwell. With less than 48 hours left to finalize the
meeting, they were cautious in making predictions on what will be
achieved on Sunday.
The Daily Mail-China Daily
news exchange item
China pursue suit as toxic slick reaches
Russia
BEIJING—A toxic slick flowing along a Chinese river has reached the
border with Russia, even as Chinese plaintiffs say that local courts are
dragging their feet in hearing a case against the company that caused
the spill, media said.
A slick of benzene has moved up the frigid Songhua river, forcing
Chinese cities to shut down water supplies as it passes. The slice has
reached the junction of the Songhua and Amur rivers, known in Chinese as
Heilong, which forms the border between the two countries, China’s
official Xinhua news agency said late Friday. Harbin business owners and
residents plan to take a class action lawsuit against the chemical plant
to China’s highest court, the South China Morning Post said on Saturday.
An explosion on November 13 at Jilin Petrochemical Co., a unit of
PetroChina, spilled 100 tons of cancer-causing benzene compounds into
the Songhua River. Government officials didn’t reveal the 80-kilometer
slick’s existence to the public until 10 days later, when it threatened
water supplies in the city of Harbin. Seventeen restaurant and public
bathhouse owners and three Harbin residents would take their case to the
Supreme People’s Court next week, if provincial courts failed to hear it
by Tuesday, the South China Morning Post said. “I simply want to do
justice to my fellow citizens in Harbin whose health has been under
serious threats over the years by the contaminated river,” Wang Baoqing,
a restaurant owner seeking a symbolic compensation of 10,000 yuan
($124), told the paper. “It appeared both provincial courts are adopting
delay tactics while waiting for instructions from higher authorities,
which may not come any time soon,” the newspaper quoted Hu Fengbin, the
lawyer leading the litigation, as saying. “Despite (the fact) that there
is no precedence in the country to provide compensation for large-scale
environmental damages...we will give it a try,” he said.—Agencies
Pakistan considers
expand its banking network in China
BEIJING—Pakistan will gradually expand its banking network in China to
facilitate the trading sector and promote Chinese investment in the
country, said a senior Pakistani official. The country has already
established its two representative offices in Beijing, one by the
National Bank of Pakistan and other Habib Bank. The opening up the
representative offices is a step forward formally launching normal
banking operation, the official said here while talking to APP.
Pakistan may ask the Chinese authority to relax the relevant rules about
operating capital to integrate itself with the local banking sector that
has huge investment potential. The representatives offices are aimed to
act as a bridge between the banks, industries and trade houses of
Pakistan and China by facilitating transactions, joint ventures,
performance bonds/guarantees, correspondent banking, trade financing.
A total of 71 foreign banks from 20 countries and regions had set up 238
operational entities in China by the end of October this year. Whereas,
173 foreign banks from 40 countries and regions have set up 238
representative offices in 23 cities in China, said Chairman Liu Mingkang
of the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
The total assets of foreign banks in China amounted to 84.5 billion US
dollars, accounting for about 2 percent of the total banking assets in
China, Liu told a press conference held by the Information Office of the
State Council. The foreign currency loans made by them accounted for 20
percent of those made by all banking institutions in China. The scope of
business permissible for foreign banks in China has also been further
enlarged as 138 of them are allowed to engage in renminbi-dominated
business, and 15 are approved to offer web services, Liu said.
While honoring its World Trade Organization commitments, China also
opened a number of new businesses for foreign banks, such as custodian
services for qualified foreign institutional investors (QFII), insurance
agency business, custody business for overseas use of insurance foreign
exchange funds, and custody business for stock assets of insurance
companies. Overall, foreign banks in China are now permitted to offer
more than 100 types of products and services under 12 broad categories
of business activity.—APP
Closing gap
between haves & have-nots
BEIJING—A new report is urging
the Chinese government to focus on giving migrant workers and farmers a
fair chance since the gap between the haves and have-nots has already
become a threat toward the country’s social harmony.
A set of policy suggestions to close the gap between them and other
social groups in China was found in the China National Human Development
Report 2005 released on Friday, which was commissioned by the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The government should take actions
to ensure the punctual payment of salaries, provision of shelter, access
to education for children, social security entitlements and union
membership, the report said. “Achieving development with greater equity
and ensuring that all people, including the disadvantaged groups, have
equal opportunities and a decent life free from poverty should be the
future focus of China’s future development plans,” said Khalid Malik, UN
Resident Co-ordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China, in an
interview with China Daily.
UNDP China expected the report, with the theme of “Towards Development
with Equity,” to become a major reference for the policy makers of the
Chinese Government, which has been busy drafting its 11th Five-year
(2006-10) Economic and Social Development Plan. China has been trying to
find a balance between efficiency and equality in income distribution.
As the country’s economy took off, however, priority was given to
efficiency, and a huge number of farmers, migrants and even some urban
labourers at the lower rungs of the social ladder have been economically
affected, according to the report. Even in the relatively developed
Pearl River Delta in South China’s Guangdong Province, a migrant worker
earns only around 700 yuan (US$85) per month. In Chinese rural areas,
about 30 million people still live in poverty and 60 million live close
to the national poverty line with an annual income of 637 yuan (US$79).
The report said that it’s of great importance to promote fairness in
income distribution as a way to curb unstable factors that could
endanger social stability and public security.
China’s Gini coefficient an internationally accepted measurement of
income equality was estimated by some research organizations at 0.45
this year. The “alarm boundary” stands at 0.4. The coefficient was 0.30
in 1982 and 0.45 in 2002. Among the 131 countries in the UNDP’s updated
survey, only 31 countries are in a worse situation than China in terms
of equality in income distribution. “We need to look at the problems and
come up with constructive suggestions,” said Lu Mai, secretary-general
of the China Development Research Foundation. “It is high time for the
government to target balanced social development as a major policy
target as China is trying to quadruple its economy by 2020.” Lu worked
as a co-ordinator of the writing team of the report since last June.
The report, commissioned by UNDP China and nationally co-ordinated by
the China Development Research Foundation, results from nine background
reports on different topics, which were hammered out by a team of 13
think-tank researchers since last June. The writing team was supervised
by a high-ranking advisory group co-chaired by Malik and Wang Mengkui,
president of the Development Research Centre of the State Council.
“Inequity is evident and concrete help should be immediately granted to
those in the lower level of the social ladder,” said the report’s lead
author Li Shi, professor from Beijing Normal University. The report has
paid great attention to farmers who had lost land to real estate
development, industrial zones and other uses. Official statistics
indicated that at least 40 million farmers have lost their land upon
which their basic living depends. “The country should start from
law-making and the legal system to ensure basic living necessities,
social security benefits and ample compensation for those farmers,” the
report said.
The report urges the local governments to speed up the establishment of
systems used to work out land values when requisitioning farmers’ land.
It said the compensation for farmland requisitioned by the State for
major construction projects should also be increased.
The types and quality of arable land, farmers’ input, as well as the
prices of primary products are to be taken into account when deciding
the value of average annual output. The compensation sum should also
give consideration to the local economic situation, people’s living
standards and other social security demands, according to the report.
The central government also made public compensation standards, which
were promised to pay farmers at most 30 times the value of the average
annual output of the arable land over the previous three years.
“China should make a larger attempt to solve the lingering problems of
farmers whose land was inadequately or randomly compensated in the past,
and I am sure it will,” Malik said.
—The Daily Mail-China Daily
news exchange item
PetroChina likely to
expand overseas
BEIJING—PetroChina, the nation’s biggest oil producer, is in talks with
its parent company about buying PetroKazakhstan assets through a joint
venture, the Hong Kong-listed oil company announced here the other day.
The transaction had been widely expected in the market since
PetroChina’s parent company, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), took
over PetroKazakhstan for US$4.2 billion earlier this year. PetroChina
has the priority right to buy non-Chinese assets held by State-owned
CNPC, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Friday.
“The company (PetroChina) has approached CNODC (China National Oil and
Gas Exploration and Development Corp) to discuss the possible
acquisition of interests in PetroKazakhstan,” PetroChina said. CNODC is
a wholly-owned unit of Beijing-based CNPC. No formal decision, however,
has been reached by the board, the statement said. PetroKazakhstan’s
headquarters are in Calgary, Canada, but all its operations are in the
central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.
—The Daily Mail-China Daily
news exchange item
ICBC introduces new chip bank cards
BEIJING—China’s largest commercial bank launched the nation’s first chip
bank cards here the other day that are compliant with the EMV standard,
currently the safest bank card standard globally.
The introduction of the ICBC MasterCard Peony Chip Card, issued by the
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC), made it the
first Chinese bank to join a global trend to upgrade card systems to the
new EMV technical standard. It was formulated by the world’s leading
credit card organizations of Europay, MasterCard and Visa. “The launch
of the card is of key importance to improving the security levels of
China’s bank cards, promoting the development of the bank card industry,
and preventing problems overseas bank card users have transferring into
China,” said Xu Luode, director of the Payment and Settlement Department
at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).
As more and more countries shift from stripe card standard to the EMV
standard, which substantially enhances transaction security and
operation efficiency, and boasts multi-application capabilities, Chinese
banks are facing the possibility of higher losses from transaction
fraud. Europe and many of China’s neighbours have completed their EMV
changeover, herding many international card fraudsters to countries like
China, where bank cards still use the older system. Fraudsters that used
to be active in Malaysia were already found on the move last year to
Beijing, sources said on Friday. “If China doesn’t move fast, it may
become the world’s centre of bank card fraud,” Zhang Zhimin, a division
chief with the PBOC’s Technology Department, told China Daily at the
launch ceremony. As Asia is scheduled to adopt a liability shift
mechanism at the beginning of next year, which stipulates that banks
which have not yet adopted the EMV standard be responsible for any loss
from counterfeit cards, Chinese banks need to move faster in their
efforts to upgrade card systems.
—The Daily Mail-China Daily
news exchange item
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