Trade Barriers and China

China has taken significant and often impressive steps to reform its economy since acceding to the WTO. During this period, China has repealed, revised or enacted more than one thousand laws, regulations and other measures in an effort to bring its trading system into basic compliance with WTO standards. China has also taken steps to implement numerous specific commitments pursuant to schedules set forth in its WTO accession agreement. Each year, China has made annual reductions in its tariff rates, eliminated non-tariff barriers, expanded market access for foreign services providers and improved transparency. All of these steps were designed to deepen China’s integration into the international trading system, as well as to facilitate and strengthen economic reforms that China had begun 20 years earlier.