The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ushered in opportunities and challenges to both domestic and international economies, including China. This book clearly traces the history of the WTO and China's accession to it after 15 years of negotiations. The book analyses the impact of China's entry into WTO, and shows how deftly the WTO enabled the foreign-funded banks to provide foreign-exchange services to the Chinese clients.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was proposed to be a temporary secretariat for international trade negotiations. The failure of International Trade Organization (ITO) made GATT a key player. GATT had its headquarters in Geneva. GATT suffered from three major limitations— that it was a Western organization, its enforcement powers were feeble and thirdly, it failed to include coverage of the so-called new trade issues. GATT was amazingly successful in tariff reduction. It was only in 1994, when preparing negotiations of Uruguay Round of multilateral trade, that the limitations of GATT were recognized which resulted in the signing of the "Marrakesh Protocol to the GATT 1994", which codified the entity known as the World Trade Organization (WTO).

WTO is one of the youngest of international organizations, which came into being in 1995. It is the successor of GATT. It is responsible for monitoring the national trading policies, handling the trade disputes, and enforcing the GATT agreements. In an effort to promote international agreements, WTO negotiations are conducted in closed sessions. Unlike GATT, the WTO is a permanent organization and has far greater powers to mediate the trade disputes between the member countries and to assess the penalties.

The WTO, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is headed by a biennial Ministerial Conference of a member country. It is a rule-based, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). The main objectives of WTO are: To supervise and to liberalize the international trade; to supervise the settlements of commercial conflicts. WTO facilitates the implementation of GATT and other Multilateral Trade Agreements including the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the Agreement on Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and provides the framework for the implementation of the Plurilateral Trade Agreements.

World Trade Organization, challenges, domestic and international, economies, including China, history of the WTO, and China's accession, impact of China's entry, foreign-funded banks.