December 1999 PulseOnline: TIA Around the Globe: China Accession to WTO Poised to Provide Enormous Opportunities for U.S. Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (Page 2 of 2)

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TIA hopes to see concrete progress from the agreement in the following areas:

an agreement to sign on to the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which would eliminate, by a certain date, tariffs on IT products;
the granting to foreign companies of trading and distribution rights in China;
a commitment to make all government procurement processes clear and transparent;
an agreement to sign on to the WTO's Reference Paper, part of the Basic Telecommunications Agreement (BTA). Signing on to the Reference Paper would commit China, over a period of years, to ensured interconnection to the Chinese networks, competitive safeguards against cross-subsidization, publicly available licensing criteria, creation of an independent regulator, and timely and transparent frequency allocation procedures; and
a commitment to enforcement of intellectual property rights, transparency, national treatment and competition.

For more information on the accession of China to the WTO and its impact on U.S. telecom equipment manufacturers, contact Christine Keck at (202) 383-1482 or email ckeck@tia.eia.org.

For more information on the Chinese telecommunications market or the activities of the United States Information Technology Office (USITO), TIA's affiliate office in Beijing, contact Jay Hu at (86/10) 6465-1540, fax (86/10) 6465-1543 or email jay_hu@usito.org.