The negotiations surrounding China's accession to the World Trade Organization were the most important and challenging since the conclusion of the GATT Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations in 1993. Australia's role, as a medium-sized power and significant player in international trade relations, provides a useful perspective through which to view the accession.

The negotiations were so challenging because China's accession required a comprehensive and largely new set of commitments by China to a rules-based system as well as large-scale trade liberalization. In addition it required reasonable assurance that China's membership of the WTO would not undermine Australia's interests in the operational effectiveness of both the rules-based system itself and the benefits that are derived by Australia from existing WTO member commitments.

Moreover, the Chinese market is relatively more important for some compared to other key WTO members engaged in the accession negotiations. For example, Australia sent a total of 4.7 per cent of total exports by value in 1999 to China compared with 0.9 per cent for the European Union, 1.9 per cent for the United States, 1.9 per cent for India, 2.2 per cent for Argentina, 2.7 per cent for Malaysia, 2.7 per cent for New Zealand and 3.5 per cent for Thailand. Only Indonesia (4.8 per cent), Japan (5.6 per cent) and the Republic of Korea (9.5 per cent) have higher proportions of their exports sent to China.

With other WTO trading partners Australia shares an interest in industrial products and service-sector liberalization in China.