China Says It Will Slash Tariffs : Move Is Part of Bid for World Trade Organization Admission

In a dramatic bid to gain recognition as a country willing to play by global trading rules, China announced Sunday that it will slash tariffs by about a third on most categories of imported goods.

The surprise announcement by China President Jiang Zemin came at a multilateral summit devoted to voluntary steps toward free trade in the Pacific Rim. But it clearly was heavily influenced by pressure from the United States, and was meant to promote Beijing’s application to join the World Trade Organization.

China’s move “must be interpreted as part of a process of opening and harmonizing . . . calculated to lead to the meeting of all necessary requirements for WTO membership,” said U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who met privately with Jiang on Saturday. “This was an important step down that pathway. There are others.”

The move also had diplomatic significance, fitting into a recent warming of U.S.-China relations, marked most notably by a summit between Jiang and President Clinton held in New York in October.

It also signals greater access for foreign businesses to a market of 1.2 billion people who are increasingly able to afford consumer items and whose sheer number is large enough to affect corporate strategies worldwide.

China’s fervent wish to join the WTO--which would win the country improved access to industrialized nations’ markets for Chinese goods and confirm China as a fully accepted member of the world community--has been blocked primarily by Washington’s insistence that Beijing first bring its economic and trade rules into conformity with global standards.

The Chinese tariff cuts, due to be implemented next year, brought some excitement to an otherwise heavily scripted summit of the 18-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum held Sunday.

Gore attended as a stand-in for Clinton, who canceled to deal with the U.S. budget crisis.

After the APEC summit ended, Gore and Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama held a bilateral meeting at which both leaders stressed the importance of the U.S.-Japan security relationship.

Murayama told Gore, according to a Japanese official who briefed reporters, that Japan “will firmly maintain” its security alliance with the United States.

The Gore-Murayama meeting came against the background of the September rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl, allegedly by three U.S. servicemen who are now on trial. That crime triggered a wave of opposition to U.S. bases in Japan.

Jiang’s announcement on tariff cuts and other market-opening measures, while clearly a major step forward for China’s economic reforms, included too few details for any firm assessments to be made of how greatly foreign access to the Chinese market will improve.

A written Chinese statement on the trade liberalization measures said average tariff cuts of at least 30% will be made next year on more than 4,000 tariff items. “China will also eliminate the quota, licensing and other import control measures” on about a third of the commodities now subject to such requirements, the statement said.

China has about 6,000 tariff items, so the tariff cuts will apply to about two-thirds of the tariff categories, a Chinese official said. In lowering tariffs on those items by about a third, he said, the tariffs will be cut to about 22% from a current 35.9%.

The tariff cut “sounds fairly impressive,” said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Washington-based Institute for International Economics, who was in Osaka for the APEC meeting. “However . . . what you have to do is analyze the sectoral impact of each of those moves, and discern whether there really is a liberalizing effect.

“It probably is fairly significant. But to quantify the effect is going to take a little more detailed analysis.”

The tariff announcement helps push forward a gradual improvement in U.S.-China ties, said a senior Administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We still have problems and still a good ways to go, but we have made progress now rather continually” in the past few months, he said, adding that various meetings in Osaka during the APEC gathering “continued that process.”

Bilateral U.S.-China meetings in Osaka included one between Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the Jiang-Gore meeting and lower-level discussions by trade officials.

Several Cabinet-level meetings are “in the works,” including a visit to the United States, probably during the first half of next year, by China’s defense minister, the Administration official said.

Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo bureau contributed to this report.