China is to be admitted to the World Trade Organisation after officials agreed a final package on the country’s entry to the body.
The package was approved at a meeting of the WTO's special working party, which has been negotiating with China for the last 15 years, a WTO spokesman said.
"It has been done. The big breakthrough has been achieved," said spokesman Mr Keith Rockwell. The top negotiator from the United States, Mr Jeffrey Bader, also told reporters that a deal had been completed.
The entry package which has been negotiated since 1986, will now be rubber-stamped by a formal meeting of the working party next Monday. It will then go through the formality of confirmation by the WTO's ruling General Council, essentially the same negotiators who form the working party, or by ministers of all member countries set to meet in Qatar in November.
China's entry will bring the world's fifth largest trading power - after the United States, the European Union, Japan and Canada - into the WTO, and, analysts say, change the balance of forces in the body forever.