Accession into the WTO has been spurring the growth of China's economy over the past two years, experts noted Tuesday.

A group of noted economists and scholars said at a seminar held by the Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics that problems have also been addressed earnestly by China as a WTO member.

China reported large increases in foreign trade in the second year after its WTO entry. Official figures show that the country exported 307.7 billion US dollars and imported 298.56 billion dollars of goods in the first nine months of the year, up 32.3 and 40.5 percent, respectively, year on year.

The country's contractual and actually utilized foreign investment also jumped a year-on-year 36 percent and 11.9 percent, respectively, from January to September.

Behind the robust figures were constant trade disputes, covering trade barriers, trade policies, trade transparency and plant quarantine.

Economists noted the occurrence and solution of these disputes have exerted a profound influence on the international trade environment and the sustained and healthy development of China's economy and trade.

A striking point of China's overseas trade relations in 2003 was how China addressed the issue of RMB exchange rate and the trade deficit of the United States to China.

In response to this, experts and scholars said that the trade deficit of the United States was neither as serious as the United States said nor caused by the RMB exchange rate, instead being the result of the complementary industrial structures of the two countries and investing enterprises moving to China's mainland from Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong and Taiwan.

About 200 experts and scholars from China's domestic institutions of higher learning and research institutions participated in Tuesday's seminar.

(China Daily November 12, 2003)