「WTO及两岸经贸」学术研讨会.doc

「WTO與兩岸經貿」學術研討會 指導單位：外交部、陸委會、經濟部 主辦單位：東海大學大陸社會暨管理研究中心 中華經濟研究院 會議日期：2003年11月25~26日（星期二、三） 會議地點：東海大學省政研究大樓會議廳 Bilateral Negotiations and Industrial Adjustments Leading to Taiwan’s Accession into the WTO Tain-Jy Chen Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research October 2003 Introduction Taiwan first applied to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the forerunner of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in 1990, and was finally admitted into the WTO at the start of 2002. Taiwan’s application was formally processed by the GATT in 1992, with bilateral negotiations beginning in 1994, and 30 members of the GATT participating in the process. These negotiations were to determine the concessions and reforms that Taiwan was to make in its tariff and trade structures. Following Taiwan’s accession into the WTO, its economic performance has remained stable (although not as remarkable as it had been in the 1990s) thus there seems to have been no major dislocation of industries caused by WTO membership. Although the unemployment rate shot up in 2001, a time when Taiwan registered its first-ever negative GDP growth, these events were mainly caused by industrial restructuring prompted by rising wages and massive capital outflows. WTO membership may have actually provided an opportunity for Taiwan’s industries to smooth out the adjustments that are inevitable even in the absence of such membership. Indeed, the prospect of China joining the WTO at the same time as Taiwan gave Taiwanese firms a new horizon for their adjustments. The aim of this paper is to examine the bilateral negotiations in which Taiwan has long been engaged, and the impacts of the commitments resulting from these negotiations. This leads on to a discussion of the necessary adjustments within Taiwan’s industry as a result of these commitments, from which it is very clear that, within the whole process, the China factor has played an important role. Tariff Concessions Con