What seemed inevitable for almost two decades, finally seems imminent. The mid-November Sino-US agreement over the terms on which the US would support China's entry into the 135-member WTO, paves the way for the quick accession of that country into the world trading arrangement. Needless to say, the Chinese government would have to win the support of many other members as well. Under the rules governing the WTO, where voting rights are distributed on the one-nation, one-vote principle and which follows the convention of taking decisions by consensus, the general council or a ministerial conference has to approve a membership treaty drafted after agreement with all members on the terms of accession. This requires, in principle, bilateral deals with all member countries. While quite a few countries had virtually unconditionally backed China's request for membership, 12 formal bilateral deals have been inked so far and negotiations are still open with another 28 countries, including the European Union. However, for political reasons, agreement with the US was considered a major stumbling block. With that block having been cleared, full agreement is widely expected to follow soon, even if not in time for the Seattle ministerial meet at the end of November.
 
To most China watchers, this outcome seemed inevitable, once it was clear that the Chinese economic reform which began in 1978 would remain in place. This view was buttressed by the fact that, despite China's exclusion from the formal world trading arrangement during the 1980s and 1990s, exports constituted a major plank of its growth strategy under reform. The share of merchandise trade in China's aggregate product rose from 9.2 per cent in 1978 to 16.8 per cent in 1984 and more than 20 per cent in the mid-1990s.
 
This dependence on trade implied a growing engagement of world markets. China's share of world merchandise exports which stood at between 0.7 and 0.8 per cent during the 1970s, rose to 1.4 per cent in 1983 and stood at 2.9 per cent in 1996. In that year, China's share was higher than that of other leading developing country exporters like South Korea (2.5 per cent), Singapore (2.4 per cent), Taiwan (2.2 per cent) and Mexico (1.8 per cent). With exports constituting the goal of an important segment of domestic economic activity and China's presence in international markets increasing, it no more appeared sensible for China to be vulnerable to unilateral trade policy responses and tenuous bilateral arrangements. The dangers were epitomised by the debates which surrounded the annual exercise since 1974 in which the US Congress had to ratify continuing a normal trading relationship with China.
 
Not surprisingly, China declared in 1986 that it would like to be part of the multilateral framework governing world trade. The fact that China's accession is finally in sight only 13 years later is not primarily due to its own recalcitrance. There have been occasions when China has on many trade-related issues been willing to go further in the direction of liberalisation than developing countries participating in the multilateral trading arrangement. In fact, in the dispute over patent regimes during the later stages of the negotiations that led up to the Uruguay Round agreement, China's willingness to compromise at a bilateral level was quoted to smother developing-country opposition and buttress developed-country positions. What held back the final agreement were complex political and economic compulsions in the developed countries, especially the US.
 
That such compulsions played a role is clear from the fact that as recently as April, President Clinton turned down terms offered by China in return for US support for her entry, which were no different from those underlying the mid-November agreement. Those terms were by no means limited.
 
To start with, it involves a substantial degree of liberalisation of trade. China's average import tariffs are to be reduced by almost 5 percentage points or 23 per cent from 22.1 per cent to 17 per cent. Tariffs on some farm products exported by the US are to be reduced sharply to 15 per cent. And tariffs on automobiles, currently ranging up to 100 per cent are to be subject to a "front-loaded" reduction to 25 per cent over a six-year period.