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Europe Continues With Trade Strategy
by William New
European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy this week dispensed quickly with the possibility that the 15-nation European Union would rethink its trade strategy in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
"Should we reconsider our objectives? I do not believe so," Lamy said in a Monday speech before a committee in Parliament. Changing paths on trade would play into the hands of the terrorists who seek to destabilize the democratic system, he indicated.
Lamy highlighted the still-unmet need to bring disparate elements into the free-trade debate as soon as possible. "The process of rules-based trade liberalization, and of the integration of developing countries, the concern to ensure environmental and social sustainability, are no less necessary today than yesterday."
While signaling flexibility on the timing of bilateral negotiations, he declared it essential to stick to planned multilateral trade events, especially the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting scheduled for November in Doha, Qatar.
"We have to work to maintain the November multilateral meeting," Lamy said. "Not because of obstinacy, not because nothing has changed, but for political reasons: because the dialogue and the negotiation between states or regional bodies sharing the benefit of common legal rules is of vital importance."
Not So Fast, Consumers Say
Consumers International, a global federation of some 260 consumer organizations in nearly 120 countries, last week gave some advice to WTO ministers on how to ensure that their meeting in Doha ends in success: Listen to and act upon the concerns of the public. Otherwise, the November meeting might end in disaster like its 1999 predecessor in Seattle.
The group proposed a "consumer round" in the negotiations to strengthen and protect consumers' rights and to stress the needs of developing countries. This would include renegotiating the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) to allow cheaper pharmaceuticals in developing countries. It also would mean reworking the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to ensure consumers that basic utilities such as telecommunications and electricity will not be liberalized unless "effective and pro-consumer regulatory bodies" are established.
Council Backs Self-Regulation Of Content
The Council of Europe (COE) has issued a recommendation on the self-regulation of cyber content. The text, adopted by the COE Committee of Ministers on Sept. 5, recommends the creation of self-regulatory organizations representative of various Internet constituents, such as users, service providers and content providers.
The COE also recommends that its 41 member states encourage the development and use of content descriptors to indicate such things as violence or pornography. It further recommends the development of quality labels -- for content that is suitable for children, for example.
The council also calls for the development and voluntary use of search and filtering tools, and it urges the creation of systems such as hotlines to complain about content. The Strasbourg, France-based body also stressed the use of alternative dispute resolution to enable out-of-court mediation.
Dot-Info For All -- Especially Europeans And Americans
At the recent meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in Montevideo, Uruguay, the company that won the right to manage the new .info domain announced the first results of the registration of the new domains.
Afilias disclosed that 56 percent of .info addresses claimed in the sunrise period that ended in August were from Europe. Only 35 percent were from North America, followed by 4.8 percent from Asia, 1.4 percent from Australia and 1.8 percent from other locations. By country, the United States ranked first, with 35 percent, followed by Germany's 20 percent, Austria's 10.3 percent, the United Kingdom's 6.3 percent and Switzerland's 5 percent.
An Afilias spokeswoman said the company is "very pleased" by the indication that Europe is a "very ripe" market for domain sales. Another statistic showed that Internet users are three times more likely to visit .info than .biz, she said. Real-time registration for .info begins Oct. 1.
AeA Hails Benefits Of Access To China
The technology industry was thrilled by the conclusion Monday of negotiations for China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Bill Archey, president and CEO of the electronics trade group AeA, called the conclusion of the WTO working party on China's accession a "landmark achievement" after 15 years of negotiations.
"China's WTO accession should create substantial new opportunities for our industry's exports and investments," Archey said. But Archey noted that the tech industry would not realize the benefits of China's accession right away. "[O]ver time, the benefits will flow and extend to almost every sector of the U.S. economy."
In 2000, the U.S. tech industry exported $4.6 billion of products, including $1.5 billion in computers and office equipment and $871 million in semiconductors. China is the high-tech industry's 11th-largest market for overseas investment, with $1.9 billion invested in 1998, an increase of 12.8 percent from 1993.
The statistics on the expected benefits of exports to China are impressive. According to AeA, the number of cellular subscribers in China was about 85 million by the end of 2000, reflecting an increase of 42 million in 2000 alone. China expects to add another 46 million mobile users in 2001, surpassing the United States as the world's largest market.
By 2005, AeA said, China is expected to have 260 million to 290 million mobile-phone users, with an annual demand for 40 million mobile phones, 40 million lines of mobile switches, 30 million lines of local switches, and 20 million lines of access equipment (mostly optical and wireless). There is also enormous market potential in third-generation mobile communications.
The number of fixed phone lines in China is expected to rise from 144 million in 2000 to 250 million by 2005. Telephone penetration in households should grow from 20 percent to 40 percent of households by 2005, amounting to 500 million total phone users, both fixed and mobile.
Software, Hardware Markets Seen Skyrocketing
China's software market is expected to grow from $756 million in 1998 to $5 billion by 2003, a rate of 28 percent per year. The number of Internet users in China, meanwhile, grew from 1.1 million in May 1998 to 22.5 million at the end of 2000. Chinese reportedly will be the most-used language on the Internet by 2006.
China also had an installed base of 30 million personal computers by the end of 2000, of which 8.9 million were connected to the Internet. PC sales nearly doubled in 2000, to 7 million, and may reach 10 million in 2001. China's PC market already is growing at twice the world average and is expected to be the world's second-largest PC market by 2002.
China's semiconductor market is estimated to be up to $8 billion per year, making it the third-largest market. Imports account for some 80 percent of the market.
The Chinese semiconductor equipment and materials market is estimated to exceed $1 billion per year and reach $4 billion in 2003. Under the conditions of China's WTO entry, semiconductor tariffs, currently as high as 10 percent, would be eliminated by 2002, and semiconductor equipment and materials tariffs, which are as high as 35 percent, would be eliminated by 2005.
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