Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-14-Speech-3-223"
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"en.20000614.9.3-223"2
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"Mr President, while international big business is busy popping champagne corks in celebration of the agreement on China's proposed accession to the WTO, China's small-scale farmers are already quaking in their shoes. They know that accession to the WTO will be a very mixed blessing for China and that for them, as small farmers, it could spell ruin. So I beg to differ with Commissioner Patten. There are many people in China for whom this agreement does not spell good news.
Powerful international agri-business knows that too. That is why US grain companies like Cargill cannot believe their luck. They have just been handed the biggest market in the world and can expect US farm exports to increase by USD 2 billion over the next five years as Chinese tariff cuts begin to take effect. No wonder they are already gloating over bigger, better and more consistent markets.
But while Cargill is so delighted that its profits will rise while Chinese self-sufficiency in agricultural goods falls, the picture is a good deal less optimistic for the people of China themselves. It has been estimated that increased competition from cheap agricultural imports could mean that about 400 million rural Chinese will no longer be needed on farms by 2005. It is almost impossible to conceive of such a huge figure or to think about the social dislocation and misery that will cause.
The Commission is offering technical support to the Chinese in order to help them with the enormous economic restructuring which accession to the WTO will bring. What I would like to see is an equal concern to help with the almost inconceivable social restructuring which will inevitably follow in its wake with – I repeat – 400 million rural farmers out of a job.
Mr Lamy has been quoted as saying that the bilateral negotiations between the EU and China yielded 96% of what the EU was demanding. Would he like to estimate what percentage of success the Chinese people will get from these same negotiations?"@en1
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