Senior Official Credits WTO Accession for Advancing Transparency

Zhou Hanhua, the head of the State Council-designated drafting team on open government measures, credited WTO accession with raising people's awareness about their rights and the importance of openness and transparency, according to an interview published on October 13 in the Beijing Review. According to Zhou, "[Chinese] citizens are more conscious about their own rights, especially after China entered the World Trade Organization, as the WTO raised the two major principles of openness and transparency." Zhou also credited China's WTO accession, among other factors, with advancing both awareness and acceptance of open government initiatives among Chinese government officials.

China's WTO transparency commitments require the Chinese government to publish any trade-related measure that it enforces. Problems emerged in 2003 and 2004 with the implementation of this commitment, for example, the government's refusal to publish a mandatory wireless networking encryption standard that it later withdrew. Nonetheless, the Chinese government has an effective system for publishing central government and provincial level measures by the time they come into force. Moreover, the U.S. business community has apparently become less concerned over time about problems with the Chinese government’s implementation of its transparency commitments. In 2003, U.S. companies operating in China participating in the U.S.-China Business Council's 2003 Membership Priorities WTO Survey ranked implementation of transparency commitments second among top U.S. business issues. In the 2004 Membership Priorities WTO Survey, the responding companies ranked concerns about implementation of transparency commitments sixth among the most important issues. In the 2005 Member Survey, the Council did not provide specific rankings, but transparency remained an important but not critical concern.