The experience of China's WTO membership shows that further opening-up would help push forward needed reforms

China's enormous success in pushing forward a series of domestic reforms in order to join the World Trade Organization offers valuable experience on how to promote interaction between reforms and opening-up.

The country revised a total of 2,300 laws and regulations at the central level and more than 19,000 local ones to facilitate its bid for WTO membership, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce. On the fifth anniversary of its accession to the WTO in 2006, China had opened more than 100 of its 160 service areas to the outside world in accordance with its WTO membership commitments, an opening-up degree that is tantamount to that fulfilled by some developed countries. In particular, China fully kept its commitments and kept its hands away from the pricing of almost all commodities and services except for the implementation of guidance prices for grains, finished oil and postal services. It is this commitment to giving the market a decisive role in the pricing of goods and services that has helped China to further push forward market reforms and successfully make the transition from a planned economy to a market economy. This transformation has forcibly driven China's economic development and further narrowed the gap with developed countries.