China ends developing-nation status to strengthen WTO amid Trump tariffs

China has said it would no longer seek the special treatment given to developing countries in World Trade Organisation agreements a change long demanded by the United States.

Commerce Ministry officials on Wednesday said the move was an attempt to boost the global trading system at a time when it is under threat from tariff wars and protectionist moves by individual countries to restrict imports.

They did not mention the United States by name or President Donald Trump's imposition of tariffs on many other countries this year, including China.

The US has long argued China should give up the developing-country status because it is the world's second-largest economy. The advantages of that designation at the WTO include lower requirements to open their markets to imports and longer transition periods to implement such market-opening steps.

The WTO provides a forum for global trade talks and enforces agreements but has become less effective, prompting calls for reform.

The head of the Geneva-based organisation described the Chinese move as major news key to WTO reform and applauded and thanked the country's leaders in a post on X.

This is a culmination of many years of hard work, wrote Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO director-general.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced the change in a speech in New York on Tuesday to a China-organised development forum at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly.

China is a middle-income country, and the Commerce Ministry officials emphasised that it remains part of the developing world.

Increasingly, though, it has become a source of loans and technical assistance to other countries seeking to build roads, railways, dams and other major projects, often undertaken by major Chinese state-owned companies.