On Nov. 10, 2001, Trade Ministers in Doha Approved China's Entry Into the World Trade Organization, Ending a Marathon Negotiation

The world was still absorbed by the aftermath of September 11 when trade ministers gathered in Doha, Qatar, for the World Trade Organization's fourth ministerial conference. On Saturday, Nov. 10, 2001, they took up an item that had stalled, restarted and stalled again for a decade and a half: whether China would be admitted.

The Long Wait

China had first sought to rejoin the system in 1986, when it applied to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO's predecessor. The talks outlasted the GATT itself, which became the WTO in 1995, and dragged through years of bargaining over tariffs, agriculture, banking, telecommunications and the treatment of state-owned industries. Bilateral deals with major trading partners, including a landmark agreement with the United States in 1999, cleared the largest hurdles. By the time ministers convened in Doha, the substance was settled, and the formal approval of China's accession package was largely a matter of ceremony. It was a ceremony, though, that had taken the better part of a generation to schedule. Negotiators who began the process as young officials had grown into senior ones before it ended, and the country they were bargaining over had changed beyond recognition. The application had been filed by an economy that was still emerging from central planning; the approval came for one that was already a manufacturing powerhouse.

The Doha decision was not the final step. China formally became the WTO's 143rd member on Dec. 11, 2001, after completing its own ratification process, and the self-governing island of Taiwan was approved as a member the day after China's approval, under the name Chinese Taipei. Membership bound Beijing to lower tariffs and open sectors of its economy to foreign competition, and it gave Chinese exporters more secure access to overseas markets. Over the following years, China's trade volume climbed steeply, and the country became central to global supply chains. Yet the conference where the approval happened had a different official purpose: ministers were launching a new round of trade talks, known as the Doha Development Agenda. That round was meant to be the headline, and it never concluded. The side agenda ended up outlasting the main event.