Impact of Chinese Characteristics on the World Trade Organization: Challenges and Strategies

Abstract

Following China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), it has been impossible to overlook the influence of its economy on the multilateral trading system. Many published studies have examined why China joined the WTO and the comprehensive impacts of WTO membership on China, but few studies have focused on China's impact on the WTO. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining China's changing role in the multilateral trading system from political and legal perspectives, seeking to shed light on how Chinese characteristics have reshaped the power structure and rule‐based system of the WTO. While its accession has made the WTO more relevant in regards to global trade governance, China has been accused of upsetting the WTO's rules‐based system because of its unique political and economic regime. The WTO and its members should take the Chinese characteristics into consideration and regulate China's practices through using the dispute settlement mechanism, promoting China's accession to plurilateral agreements and adopting a “soft law” approach.

U.S.‐China trade war and competitive advantage of Vietnam

“…The United States and China became one of each other's most important trading partners after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. U.S. goods exported to China have consistently been more remarkable than those imported from China, with a $375.6 billion trade deficit between the two nations in 2017 (Li & Tu, 2018).…”

Reforming the World Trade Organization: Practitioner Perspectives from China, the EU, and the US

“…One might normally expect a rising power to respond to shifting power by demanding institutional change (Goddard, 2020), but it is not clear that that is what China wants. Chinese scholars argue that "WTO members need to engage with China in a more positive and constructive way, taking China's rise and 'Chinese characteristics' into consideration" (Li and Tu, 2018). Indeed, some scholars think the challenge of rising powers in the WTO is not to its institutional arrangements but to the dominance of the US (Hopewell, 2016).…”

“…Chinese scholars see the dispute-settlement system as the fi rst option to reconcile the relationship between China and its trading partners, hence wishing to be seen as a responsible player. China is motivated to comply with dispute-settlement rulings (Li and Tu, 2018). China is not a player in the Appellate Body debate, although it is much closer to the EU position than to the US.…”