俞建华大使在2月份总理事会上就贸易谈判委员会主席报告部分的发言

Statement by H.E. Ambassador YU Jianhua

at the General Council Meeting

Geneva,20 February 2015

Thankyou, Mr. Chairman.

Letme join the other colleagues in welcoming the new colleagues and extending the bestwishes to those colleagues who are leaving us. We appreciate the precise reportby the Chairman of TNC. Our delegation associates iteself with the statementmade by Chinese Taipei on behalf of RAMs.

Todayis the second day of China’s New Year, and we are celebrating this Festivalwith our families and friends. This year is the Year of Sheep or Goat. Sheep orGoat represents good luck. Here I would like to share this happy time with youall, wish all of us good luck and this Organization a very prosperous andproductive New Year.

Atthe first TNC meeting around this time last year, I was saying that in farmers’mind, spring was the season for sowing seeds. Fortunately, with our collective labourand bit of luck, last year of 2014 proved to be a good year, both for sowingseeds and harvesting crops. The best harvest is the three General Council Decisionswe adopted last November. Now it is the season to sow seeds again, we areexpecting to get a good Work Program by summer time of July, and ultimately a moreremarkable harvest by December at the MC10 in Nairobi.

Mr.Chairman,

Wefully appreciate the untiring efforts that you, the DG as well as other Chairshave made in the previous two months. There has been a wave of intensiveconsultations among members in various formats, which helped us regain the momentum.It is true that we have not seen any substantial results, but we have a betterunderstanding of each other’s concerns, particularly the “red lines”. Thisexercise is an inevitable yet useful step towards success, enabling us to havea realistic vision on what is desirable, and what is achievable. What’s moreimportant is that, members have shown their strong commitments to the July Post-BaliWork Program. These commitments are indispensable to the next stage ofnegotiations.

ThePost-Bali Work Program matters not only to the creditability of the Doha round,but also to the creditability of the rule-based multilateral trading system. Alldiscussions should be based on and fully consistent with the Mandate embodied inthe Doha Declaration, Hong Kong Declaration, July Framework Package and Bali Declaration.Before we propose any new approach or modality, or we request others to dosomething, we have to prepare the answers to these questions: Do we have a mandate?Can we offer something adequate to balance the two ends of the equation? Willour requests make the business more doable or even less doable?

Talkingabout the domestic support, we should not mislead the discussions by mixing upthe support of different natures, of different histories, of different size interms of per capita and for different purposes. We should be honest to look at:whether the support is provided to big, rich farmers for their export,commercial interests, or for the food security and livelihood of hundreds ofmillions of small and poor farmers; whether these are the measures to directly andactively distort the market or to offset the impact of distorted internationalmarket.

Forthe next steps, we believe that Members should build upon the discussions inthe past few weeks and engage in more substantive and solution-oriented deliberationson the basis of 2008 modality texts. Moving into a new stage, we have to bear inmind some fundamental principles.

First,recalibration should take good care of each and every member’s comfort and acceptabilityas the DG rightly pointed out. We do not want to see a scenario where only a fewmembers are suffering the discomfort. Our future discussions should beconducted in a more transparent, inclusive, fair and scientific manner. Weshould be very cautious and avoid being led into uncharted territory of uncertaintyand difficulty.

Second,recalibration must be done on a non-discriminatory way, that is, if somemembers’ obligations are readjusted, then obligations of other members should alsobe readjusted accordingly. Only win-win solutions could survive.

Third,the DDA is a development round, and some key principles should be fullyreflected throughout the negotiations, such as Special and Differential treatment,Less-Than Full Reciprocity. The flexibilities already granted to the LDCs andSVEs should also be preserved.

Mr.Chairman,

Timeis not our friend. With only six months left, we have no time to waste. If we throwaway all we have achieved in the past and start from the scratch, we are goingnowhere. If we choose an uncharted route, we are going nowhere. Neither ofthese would make our life easier at all.

Beforeconcluding, I want to assure you, Mr. Chairman, that China is fully committedand would join hands with other members, marching toward our common goal ofhaving a doable and commercially meaningful Work Program. To that end, we will remainopen and continue to positively participate in any discussions and consultationsof various configurations.

Ithank you Mr. Chairman.