ABSTRACT
This year marks the 10th anniversary of China’s entry into the WTO. Experience over the past decade has proven that China’s entry has been quite successful: it has accelerated the process of turning China’s economy in a market-oriented direction, made contributions to the national economy, and elevated China’s economic standing in the world. While entry served to open markets for others within China, it also, and to a greater degree, served to open outside markets to China. This in turn stimulated the process of internationalizing various industries in China. As the market for construction and engineering projects opened up within China, other WTO member countries also opened their markets in this arena to China. China’s enterprises thereby gained greater space in which to grow. Seen in overall terms, entry into the WTO has enabled China’s foreign-project contracting to grow in an exponential way over the past decade. New models by which the business was conducted were constantly being explored; the division of labor in the industry continued to deepen; and Chinese businesses engaged in international projects continued to grow in overall strength. All of these things help build a solid foundation for upgrading and transforming the industry. In the future, we should make use of the opportunities presented by China’s accession to the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to take a very accurate reading of the global potential, and we should continue to take advantage of our comparative advantages. We should lose no time in upgrading and transforming the models by which we conduct overseas contracting, so that we can forge a whole new era for the business in the coming decade.
