Grounded on a series of first-hand interviews with Chinese government officials, this book examines China's accession to the World Trade Organization, providing an 'inside' look at Chinese WTO accession negotiations. Presenting a systematic political economy model in analyzing Beijing's decision-making mechanisms, the book argues that China's WTO policy making is a state-led, leadership driven, and top-down process. Feng explores how China's determined political elite partly bypassed and partly restructured a largely reluctant and resistant bureaucracy, under constant pressure from an increasingly globalized international system. By addressing China's accession to the WTO from a political analysis perspective, the book provides a theoretically informed and intriguing examination of China's foreign economic policy making regime. The book highlights contemporary debates relating to state and institutionalist theory and provides new and useful insights into a significant development of this century.

With China's accession to the World Trade Organization imminent, this book brings together the expert views of scholars, policy-makers and business representatives on the consequences of this historic event. Insight into the past and future of China's relationship to the WTO is offered by authors involved on both sides of the negotiations on the EU-China bilateral agreement of May 2000 and the on-going negotiations up to spring 2001. An analyst and representatives from four economic sectors (the automobile industry, telecommunications, insurance and banking) clash over their predictions for the future. Also presented is an investigation of the challenges for China's political, social and legal systems, and revealing prognoses are given for the implications for global trade and investment flows for the EU and Greater China, and for the modus operandi of the WTO itself. By shedding light on economic effects and social and legal implications, the book gives a comprehensive picture of potential challenges arising from China's entry to the WTO.

With China's accession to the World Trade Organization imminent, this book brings together the expert views of scholars, policy-makers and business representatives on the consequences of this historic event. Insight into the past and future of China's relationship to the WTO is offered by authors involved on both sides of the negotiations on the EU-China bilateral agreement of May 2000 and the on-going negotiations up to spring 2001. An analyst and representatives from four economic sectors (the automobile industry, telecommunications, insurance and banking) clash over their predictions for the future. Also presented is an investigation of the challenges for China's political, social and legal systems, and revealing prognoses are given for the implications for global trade and investment flows for the EU and Greater China, and for the modus operandi of the WTO itself. By shedding light on economic effects and social and legal implications, the book gives a comprehensive picture of potential challenges arising from China's entry to the WTO.

From a Western point of view, the policy of economic engagement with China has failed. A rapid rise in living standards in China has helped legitimize and strengthen the Chinese Communist Party's power. How did Western, market-orientated, property-owning, liberal democracies go from being in a position of complete global hegemony in the early 1990s to the current crisis of confidence and loss of moral foundation? This book tells the story of the most successful trading nation of the early twenty-first century. It looks at how the Communist Party of China has retained and cemented its monopoly on political power since China's accession to the World Trade Organization in December 2001. It is the most extraordinary economic success story of our time and it has reshaped the geopolitics not just of Asia but of the world. As China has come to dominate global manufacturing, its economic power has been translated into political power, and the West now has a global rival that is politically antithetical to liberal values. The supply-side deflation from allowing 750 million low-cost workers into the global trading system combined with the policy of inflation targeting by Western central banks has led to falling real incomes for many in the West and rising asset prices that have benefited the few. Worse still, China's mercantilist model is now held up as a viable economic alternative. To have a fighting chance of protecting the freedoms of liberal democracies, it is of the utmost importance that we understand how the policy of indulgent engagement with China has affected Western society in recent years. Only then can the global trading system be reoriented for the mutual benefit of all nations.

China's historic accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001 not only represents an important milestone in the country’s transition to a market economy and integration into the global economy, but is also among the most important events in the history of the WTO and the multilateral trading system. China and Global Trade Governance: China's First Decade in the World Trade Organization provides us with some fresh empirical data to assess the country’s behaviour in the liberal international economic regime. Such an assessment is both timely and necessary as it can help us better understand China’s role in the evolving structure of global economic governance, in addition to shedding light on the broader debate about the implications of the rise of China for the international system. Through a thorough examination of China’s WTO compliance record and its experience in multilateral trade negotiations, this book seeks to better understand the sources of constraints on China’s behaviour in the multilateral trade institution as well as the country’s influence on the efficacy of the World Trade Organization. In doing so, this project speaks directly to the following questions raised by China’s unprecedented ascent in the international system: Is China a rule maker, rule follower, or rule breaker in international regimes? Is Beijing a responsible stakeholder capable of making positive contributions to global trade governance in the long-term?

China, the world's sixth largest economy, has recently joined the rules-based international trading system. What are the implications of this accession? Leading scholars and practitioners from the US, Europe, China, Australia and Japan argue that China's membership will affect the WTO's decision-making, dispute resolution and rule-based structures. It will also spur legal and economic reform, have far-reaching social, political and distributional consequences in China, facilitate a new role for China in international geo-political affairs, and alter the shape, structure and content of the international trading system as a whole. Of interest to scholars of China, as well as trade lawyers and economists.

On December 11th 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). This book examines the Prolonged negotiations leading up to this historic event.