China will play a leading role in shaping the legal framework of world trade in the 21st century, according to a spokesman for the World Trade Organization.

Keith Rockwell, chief spokesperson for the WTO, based in Geneva, Switzerland, said China, which is set to mark eight years as a member of the trade rules body, was now pivotal to the organization's future.

"China is central to the negotiations to provide new rules for the 21st century. It would be difficult to see how the global trading system could be shaped without them," he said.

"China is now in a leadership position and one in which it has exercised its rights and responsibilities in a very constructive manner," he said.

Rockwell said China has a more pragmatic approach to trade negotiations than many other countries in the WTO.

Instead of political grandstanding, it has teams of negotiators attending every stage of the negotiating process, he said.

"I would say, perhaps, they exercise their leadership in a very different way than Brazil, the United States or the European Union. They are more results-orientated and don't tend to make dramatic gestures through press conferences. They tend to work quietly behind the scenes," he said.

"The Chinese influence on WTO activity is profound. They are one of the more important members of the organization."

Rockwell said that developing a new rules framework has been key to avoiding a major trade war during the current economic downturn.

"We haven't seen any indication that the decline in trade over the last year has been driven by protectionism. What we are seeing around the edges is nothing very serious," he said.

"We are not seeing anything like the full blown protectionism we saw in the 1930s, and the reason for this is the rules framework agreed to by members over the past 60 odd years."

Rockwell said a large part of the success of China's membership of the WTO is the result of painstaking preparations by the country before joining the trade organization.

"Much of its recent growth in trade has to do with the reforms it carried out before joining the WTO. The Chinese leadership reached a conclusion that the best way to reform was within a multilateral context. They opened their markets significantly, and at the same time other markets opened to them," he said.

Rockwell said he understands concerns that China currently has about protecting Chinese farmers from unfair imports.

"The Chinese have worked hard to protect and defend the interests of 900 million poor farmers in China from import surges," he said.

Rockwell praised the quality of Chinese negotiators involved in setting new rules for the WTO.

"They have enough skilled negotiators to attend in large numbers all the negotiating sessions, and in a way that is very important," he said.

"The Chinese contribute to every meeting all year round, so they influence the way things work here in an important and significant way," Rockwell said.

(China Daily 11/02/2009 page1)