DOHA, Nov 9: China caps a 15-year struggle to prise open the doors to the World Trade Organization on Saturday, offering the potential of a major boost to global trade and sweeping change at home.

Mike Moore, director general of the Geneva-based WTO, described the conclusion of torturous negotiations for the accession of Beijing as “an enormously historic matter”.

“I think it is going to be very healthy,” he told a news conference on the eve of a five-day meeting starting later Friday of the 142-member trading body in the Qatari capital Doha.

He sought to soothe concerns that China would present even greater competitive pressure to Asia, already buffeted by the global economic slowdown after the September 11 suicide attacks in the United States.

“Of course China is going to be very competitive but having China competitive under rules, under a binding dispute mechanism, is, I would have thought, in the whole world’s interests,” he said.

A slowdown in the Japanese, United States and European Union economies was taking its toll on the job market in Asia, he conceded.

“There is going to be some severe and intense competition, there has been already,” the 52-year-old former New Zealand prime minister said. But as a WTO member, China would be competing under “certain agreed rules of engagement which protects both sides”.

In more pointed commentary, European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy warned China that its fellow WTO members would be watching to see if Beijing honoured its commitments as a full member.

“Just like every member of the WTO, China will have to deliver on its commitments, and we will be watching this very carefully,” Lamy said in an interview published on Friday in the International Herald Tribune. He said he was confident, “broadly speaking,” that China would open its market to foreign competition, adding that Beijing had earned its place in the world trade watchdog.

China in September concluded talks with WTO members on the terms and the timetable for its trade commitments within the group.

Trade ministers are due to rubber stamp the agreement here on Saturday and the government is expected to sign it the following day.

Tariffs on many agricultural imports will be lowered after China joins the global trade club, opening the vulnerable Tibetan economy to international competition, the London-based Free Tibet Campaign said in a report.

China offers at least one near certainty for WTO members who will confer here from November 9-13 to bridge differences and launch an expanded agenda of negotiations to topple trade barriers worldwide.—AFP