Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged the developed countries concerned on May 8 to fully understand that China's early entry into WTO will benefit all parties.

It is the consistent stance of the Chinese Government that China must become a WTO member as a developing country, Jiang said at a meeting with some world leading entrepreneurs and representatives from Hong Kong business circles attending the Fortune Global Forum which ended on May 14.

Jiang stressed that negotiations on China's entry into WTO have been going on for 15 years, and there still exist some differences in multilateral negotiations. China stays in touch with the relevant parties and conducts exchanges with them in order to resolve these differences.

He noted that China's accession to WTO will help promote economic development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Jiang said that China has a good start for its Tenth Five-Year Plan that begins this year, with its GDP growing by 8.1% in the first quarter. This is in sharp contrast with the slowdown of the world economy.

He said China has successfully fulfilled its Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000), established a socialist market economic system, improved the state's macro-economic control system, further pushed forward its opening-up drive, and scored notable growth in foreign trade and use of foreign capital.

China will keep a sound, steady and sustained economic growth in the new century, Jiang noted.