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Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky
discusses China with host Daljit Dhaliwal.
 Watch the video Dial-up | DSL or read the transcript.
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How will the WTO change China?
"To get rich is glorious," Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping announced in 1978. But what will be the consequences of China's membership in the ultimate economic club -- the World Trade Organization?
Consider the ties between economic reform and China's political future in our briefing by Dorinda Elliott, a former editor of ASIAWEEK.
China's WTO Guinea Pigs: Will They Bring Political Change?
By Dorinda Elliott
July 18, 2002
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Along the neon-lined streets of Shanghai and Beijing, it's clear that China is hurling itself into the global economy. Starbucks, Häagen-Dazs, and Chanel outlets are cropping up everywhere, and chichi eateries are jammed with hip young Chinese working for the new private economy.
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| 1949 |
China revokes its membership in the WTO's predecessor, the GATT, calling it "a capitalist club."
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| 1978 |
China begins market-oriented reforms that give it one of the world's fastest growing economies.
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| 2000 |
China ranks as the world's second largest economy after the U.S., based on purchasing power parity.
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| 2001 |
After a 15-year membership campaign, China joins the WTO on December 15.
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| 2003 |
Hu Jintao, the head of the fourth generation of leaders of the ruling Communist Party is elected to replace Jiang Zemin as President of China.
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Say this about China: it's got the blind pursuit of money thing down pat, but the systems and values that normally accompany modernization -- rule of law, transparency, civil society -- are another matter. If political reform and democratization come to China on the tail of its new economic freedoms, the transition could be years in the making.
Government leaders make arbitrary decisions behind closed doors. Most Chinese still have little sense of their rights or social responsibilities. After all, 25 years ago China was stumbling out of the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political violence that tore families apart, shattered traditional values and ethics, and reinforced an animalistic survival instinct. That cataclysm opened the door for Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to launch the nation on the path toward capitalism. Now, China's entry into the World Trade Organization, which requires Beijing to open its markets and follow transparent, standardized trading practices, promises to accelerate the country's transformation.
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Inside This Episode
 Read what two analysts think about the WTO in our Debate.
Test your knowledge of the events making headlines in our Interactive Challenge.
Give us your own assessment of whether China will bypass the U.S. as an economic power in our Info-Graphic.
Li Xiu Ying (pictured with her former teacher) now attends an elite prep school thanks to a WIDE ANGLE viewer who donated the tuition costs.
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