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14. Nevertheless for political reasons, China's membership of GATT may be hard to escape, if she applies as announced.
The political objections to a rebuff are obvious: those to an unsuccessful attempt at a rebuff are equally so. If, then there seemed no possibility of excluding China, what special terms could be negotiated to limit the possibility of conseqent damage?
Special Terms
15. Article XXXIII of the GATT provides for the accession of new members in the following terms:-
"A government not party to this Agreement, or a
government acting on behalf of a separate customs territory possessing full autonomy in the conduct
of its external commercial relations and of the
other matters provided for in this Agreement, may accede to this Agreement, on its own behalf or on behalf of that territory, on terms to be agreed between such government and the CONTRACTING PARTIES.
Decisions of the CONTRACTING PARTIES under this
paragraph shall be taken by a two-thirds majority."
Thus special terms may be agreed by a 2/3 majority of Contracting Parties as the price of membership for an applicant country.
Thus
15. In addition, Article XXXV provides for any existing member to decline unilaterally to be bound towards a new member. the EC could threaten not to apply the protocol, and not to accord GATT rights to China, unless satisfactory special terms were included. There is precedent too, for using Article XXXV selectively, to apply some elements of the GATT while retaining greater flexibility in others. In the case of Japan, for example, the UK (with many others initially invoked Article XXXV wholesale (but subsequently withdrew its reserve) while others,
such as South Africa, maintain under Article XXXV certain tariffs
on Japanese goods which would be discriminatory under the full
GATT rules.
16.
These seem powerful weapons, but the example of Japan demonstrates the political difficulty of maintaining exceptions
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