The 10th WTO Ministerial Conference was held in Nairobi, Kenya on December 15-19. Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng led the delegation and attended the conference. The conference concluded successfully after the Nairobi Ministerial Declaration and the 9 decisions were approved. The conference promised to further promote the Doha Round negotiation. The MOFCOM spokesman commented that, the conference was of great significance and has gained fruitful achievements. China has made active contributions to the conference by following the principle of boosting peace, promoting negotiations and facilitating the success. China is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation with other members, to implement the achievements of the conference and to maintain the multilateral trading system jointly.

The spokesman said that, it was the first time for WTO to hold the ministerial conference in Africa. It was of great importance and has gained high attention from the international community because it is coincidentally the 20th anniversary of the WTO, the UN has just formulated the sustainable development agenda and the global economy is facing many challenges. After intensive consultations and hard negotiations day after day and night after night, the conference concluded successfully on December 19 and gained fruitful achievements, which showed the leading role of WTO in international trade governance.

The conference approved the Nairobi Ministerial Declaration and 9 decisions, and affirmed the achievements of the WTO in the 20 years since its establishment. The conference also reached consensus on the Doha issues like agriculture export competition and the least developed countries, and promised to comprehensively cancel the agricultural export subsidies. The conference also reached new multilateral disciplines on issues like export financing support, cotton and international food aid, which will contribute to the building of a fairer international trade environment. At the same time, the conference agreed to give the least developed countries preferential treatments in terms of preferential rules of origin, Service immunity mechanism and cotton, in order to practically solve the difficulties of the least development countries and benefit them through the multilateral trading system. The conference also reached the first tariff concession agreement of WTO during the recent 18 years, namely the Expansion of Information Technology Agreement, covering the international trade valued US$ 1.3 trillion. Besides, the conference officially approved Afghanistan and Liberia to enter WTO, further expanding the representativeness of the multilateral trading system.

The spokesman pointed out that Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng led a delegation and attended the conference. The delegation was composed of the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture, the General Administration of Customs, the Export-Import Bank of China and the Permanent Delegation to WTO. China has made active contributions to the conference through boosting peace, negotiation and success. In his address at the conference, Minister Gao Hucheng fully affirmed the status and effects of the multilateral trading system in the international economic governance. He stressed that development is the key to solve the global issues, and only the joint development could realize sustainable development. He appealed to all the members to keep their confidence and make joint efforts to promote the negotiations to gain fruits. China supported the multilateral trading system, stuck to the development goals, spoke out China’s opinions and put forward China’s plan, communicated closely with other members to seek consensus. Particularly, the breakthrough of the Information Technology Agreement benefited from the consensus between China and the U.S., and China played an important role in the negotiation. Before the conference, China funded the government of Kenya and the WTO Secretariat to hold the round table meeting about the entry of the least development countries to WTO. The experience of China’s entering into WTO and its opening up gained favorable reception from the members. The President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta attended the high-level forum of the round table, and highly evaluated China-Africa cooperation, China-Kenya friendship and China’s contributions to promoting trade and assistance, which laid a favorable foundation for the achievements of the conference.

The spokesman reiterated that we should still pay attention to the differences that have not been solved. When talking about the future of Doha Round, all the members were willing to further promote the issues on agriculture, non-agriculture, service, rules and intellectual property, but had different opinions on the patterns and methods to promote the negotiation. China put forward that the development of authorization was still a main method to solve the unbalanced development of the world through trade. The WTO members should develop authorization according to Doha, and steadily promote Doha to gain active achievements. China is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation with the other members, seek common points while reserving differences, and reach consensus in order to implement the fruits of the conference and maintain the multilateral trading system jointly.