"No special WTO benefits"/ China's decision is expected to "calm" trade relations with the US
China will no longer seek benefits for developing countries at the World Trade Organization, removing a point of contention with the United States that has been a stumbling block to their agreement to reform the global trade arbiter.
Premier Li Qiang announced that the country will stop seeking new "special and differential" rights in any current and future WTO negotiations.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala welcomed the decision on X, calling it "a culmination of many years of hard work" and thanking China's leadership.
The gesture is significant at a time when higher U.S. tariffs are forcing China to increasingly divert its exports to rising economic powers from Latin America to Africa and Southeast Asia, a push that is beginning to meet resistance around the world.
And as Beijing seeks to negotiate a more stable trade deal with the US, it is also an attempt to curry favor with President Donald Trump, who has long been angry about the designation he said was unfairly applied to the world's second-largest economy.
The issue of China's status has also been one of the issues that has hindered negotiations on WTO reform.
Earlier this year, trade chiefs from across the Asia-Pacific region, including the US and China, acknowledged the importance of the organisation in advancing trade issues and the need for its rules, calling for "meaningful, necessary and comprehensive reforms to improve all its functions".
Developing country status is self-proclaimed and offers various benefits to WTO members, including longer timeframes to implement agreements. China has long called itself the world's largest developing country, emphasizing this position to claim a leadership role for other developing countries.
Despite China's four-decade transformation that has turned it into the world's largest trading and manufacturing economy, the UN still classifies it as a developing country. It ranks far below the top 50 countries in the world by gross domestic product per capita, according to the International Monetary Fund, below Serbia and just ahead of Montenegro and Turkmenistan.
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