Statement by Director General Zhang Xiangchen at the Informal Open-Ended Special Session of Committee of Agriculture
May 26th 2008
Thank you Mr. Chair,
China supports the statements made by Indonesia on behalf of G33 and Brazil on behalf of G20.
Mr. Chairman, we fully appreciate your great efforts in producing the newly revised modalities for agriculture. The new text reflects the progress made in recent negotiations to some extent. However, there is still much work to do to reduce the number of outstanding issues before we could have a good basis for the horizontal process.
We notice that the progress since this February is partially incorporated in the text. For instance, on Market Access, a basic structure is included for TRQ expansion of sensitive products under the partial designation approach, and two additional alternatives for the treatment of sensitive products of developing country Members are incorporated, which are not based on TRQ expansion; on Domestic Support, the concerns of developing Members regarding green box is incorporated and the provisions on blue box are also improved, compared with the first revised text.
In general, it is our view that the imbalance is not well addressed, in terms of the different concerns of developed and developing country Members. On one hand, the concerns of developed country Members have been well accommodated through many flexibilities on OTDS reduction, disciplines on product-specific AMS and Blue Box payments, TRQ expansion of sensitive products and tariff capping. On the other hand, concerns of developing country Members on food security and livelihood security are not well addressed, including Special Products, Special Safeguard Mechanism and the TRQ underfill mechanism.
Having said that, we believe the OTDS and product-specific disciplines are subject to further improvement with a view to prevent the concentration of support and ensure the effective cut. Actually, the round is all about the phase-out of trade distortions in agriculture.
The SP and SSM issues are the most important issues among others for many developing countries, and there are still huge gaps between the current text and our expectation. For example, there are fundamentally contradicting opinions on SP. Given to the huge gaps, we are not confident of the overall outcome without further improvement.
Mr. Chair, on the issue of RAMS, China is surprised by the substantial changes to the RAMs provisions on flexibilities in tariff reduction and SPs in the new text when we compare the two modalities. It is hard to understand such kind of changes, which are not from any of the open discussions in whatever forms. We need clarifications from the Chair on the rationale behind the changes, which we believe are not logical and are inconsistent with the principle of “the higher the tariff, the deeper the cut”. We reiterate that the RAMs issue must be effectively addressed and we need to move forward from the original text, rather than moving backward.
We also have serious concern on the current texts regarding the reduction of in-quota tariff and the TRQ under-fill mechanism, which is not mandated by the July Framework. We have no intention to discuss and create such a mechanism that has no legal basis.
Mr. Chair, China will participate in the consultations ahead together with other Members, with a view to find more possibilities to further bridge the gap in the negotiations. Meanwhile, we would like to have sufficient time for consultation in the negotiating group to have a sounder basis before we can enter into next stage.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. | 
