WTO and developing countries: The case for liberalization of telecommunications services in China

As developing countries have grown in terms of membership numbers, they have increasingly played an important role in the WTO arena. Encouraging the participation and strengthening the capacity of developing countries in the WTO system has become one of the vital issues since the establishment of the WTO in 1995. The WTO membership in 2001 proves to be a doubleedged sword for China. This chapter takes liberalizing telecommunications as an example to elaborate the infl uence of the WTO membership on China, the biggest developing country.