An accord is due to be signed today paving the way for China's membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) following last-minute talks in Geneva at the weekend.
The agreement between the Chinese negotiators and their future WTO partners will cover all commercial relations, particularly in the fields of farming, banking and insurance.
The working group charged with finalising the agreement will now have to formally recommend China's WTO membership at a ministerial conference scheduled for November 9th to 13th in Qatar and due to be attended by 142 member states.
China must then ratify the accord and wait 30 days before its membership becomes official.
Taiwan, which has been separated from mainland China since 1949, is set to follow hard on Beijing's heels, according to an agreement dating from 1992.
Its own working group is expected to sign an agreement on WTO membership in Geneva the day after China.
Becoming members of the same club will not necessarily put the two states on speaking terms.
"We think under the WTO framework Communist China must talk to us, but what if they don't?" asked Mr Chiu Kun-shuan, director of the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University. "Can we sue them? It looks like wishful thinking on our side."
Last month, a blue-ribbon committee to President Chen Shui-bian recommended that the government "aggressively open" to China and suggested discussing with Beijing ending a decades-old ban on direct transport links once they have joined the WTO.
But Beijing, which views the self-governing Taiwan as a breakaway province, has refused to deal with Mr Chen, whose Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) espouses independence.
Beijing insists that Mr Chen must accept its cherished "one China" principle. He refuses, saying the condition is tantamount to surrender for his island of 23 million people.
China's WTO membership follows 15 years of talks.
This slow process, which accelerated over the past three years, began with bilateral agreements between China and the US, and then the EU.
On Thursday, Mexico became the final country to conclude such agreements with China.
Experts believe that China will be able to take advantage of the economic slowdown worldwide, but that it will take the West much longer to exploit the vast Chinese market.