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11. Keeping China’s WTO Commitments Clear

Author:
Su Qingyi
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Abstract:
In terms of fulfillment of WTO (World Trade Organization) commitments, all members of the organization should be treated equally. First of all, China’s WTO accession commitments, which were made when the country was admitted to the organization in 2001, were recorded in three documents, Protocol on the Accession of the People’s Republic of China to the WTO and two reports from the working party on the accession of China to the WTO. The two reports specified China’s promises to open up its services market. And the protocol defined the country’s other promises outside the realm of the services market. Second, after years of China’s accession to the WTO, WTO members should be very clear of China’s compliance with its WTO commitments. For questions as to whether China has opened up in compliance with its commitments, whether it met targets on the time table and whether reforms have been carried out in some areas, the results should be clear. Third, since 2006, WTO has been performing a trade policy review on China every two years. Every WTO member can supervise China’s fulfillment of its WTO commitments within the WTO framework. If any have complaints about China, the two sides can solve the problem within the WTO review mechanism. In fact, the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism can be employed to force China to make readjustments.
Topic:
Treaties and Agreements, World Trade Organization, Economy, and Multilateralism
Political Geography:
China and Asia

12. Chinese Economic Challenges to the World Trade Organization: Separating Myth from Reality

Author:
Umbreen Javaid and Muhammad Sharreh Qazi
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
China has taken the world with a different angle; an angle that kept China mostly behind its conservative mercantilist restrictions and access to foreign investors largely remained actively initiated. Even though China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and remained an observer to the General Agreement to Tariff and Trade (GATT), cost of receiving membership meant extreme modifications to Chinese system of economy. Modifications that required China to allow access and tariff concessions to global community and demanded Chinese nationalist mercantilist designs to be affable to international standards. This however, never meant that China would stop expanding, or at least take a recess from its economic augmentation. WTO quickly saw China rise to a point where even though it remained compliant to international economic norms, it still remained a formidable rebel to set patterns, tacitly compelling WTO and other international economic forums to feel impractical, if not impotent. Chinese economic investments, together with its dominance on international relations, has often raised questions on its intentions into becoming a member of WTO. It is often miscalculated that China intends to implode WTO from within by introducing a change in the international economic system through sheer pressure or somehow, China is strategizing to manipulate WTO as a nascent member in order to introduce another form of global competition against members that are already in antagonism towards China.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, World Trade Organization, and Soft Power
Political Geography:
Pakistan, China, South Asia, Asia, and Punjab

13. The State-owned Enterprises Issue in China's Prospective Trade Negotiations

Author:
John Whalley and Hejing Chen
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
China, in the next few years, faces the prospect of major regional and bilateral trade negotiations possibly including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Japan, Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand and separate negotiations with India, Korea and Japan, potentially the United States and even possibly the European Union. A likely key element in such negotiations, and one already raised by the United States in the TPP negotiations, is that of trade arrangements involving state-owned enterprises (SOEs). China is viewed from outside as having a large SOE sector, and large SOEs are viewed as having a protected monopoly position in domestic Chinese markets.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Markets, and World Trade Organization
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Europe, India, Asia, Australia, and Korea

14. Ukraine's Choice: European Association Agreement or Eurasian Union?

Author:
Anders Åslund
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Since gaining independence in December 1991, Ukraine has vacillated between the European Union and Russia for economic and political cooperation. Until recently neither had offered Ukraine much, but in the last few months, things have heated up. Ukraine's intention to sign an Association Agreement for political association and economic integration with the European Union has raised a furor in the Kremlin, which is now trying to block Ukraine from aligning itself with the European Union. Moscow has imposed trade sanctions in clear violation of its obligations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and is pursuing an intense confrontation.
Topic:
Economics, Treaties and Agreements, World Trade Organization, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, Asia, and Moscow

15. Prospects for Services Trade Negotiations

Author:
Jeffrey J. Schott, Julia Muir, and Minsoo Lee
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Trade and investment in services are difficult to measure, and the regulatory barriers that inhibit the free flow of services are hard to quantify. As a result, very little attention has been paid to dismantling barriers to services trade and investment. Rather, free trade negotiations tend to focus on liberalizing merchandise trade. This paper examines what has been achieved in both regional and multilateral compacts by surveying international precedents involving Asian countries in which services reforms have been included in bilateral and regional trade pacts. The authors then assess the prospects for services trade negotiations and explore how services trade negotiations could be pursued over the next decade through two distinct channels: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and a plurilateral approach among groups of WTO countries. The authors find that in the case of developing Asia, free trade agreements have largely excluded services or have only committed to "lock in" current practices in a narrow subset of service sectors. This is also the case in agreements negotiated between developing countries, which have produced less substantial commitments to liberalize services than those negotiated between developing and developed countries. Multilateral negotiations on services have also underperformed, as substantive negotiations on services in the Doha Round never really got underway. To that end, the authors advocate a stronger effort by developing Asian countries to prioritize services negotiations in their regional arrangements and to expand coverage of services in those pacts to a broad range of infrastructure services that are included in other FTAs in force or under construction in the Asia-Pacific region.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and World Trade Organization
Political Geography:
Asia

16. Getting the fundamentals right: The early stages of Afghanistan's WTO accession process

Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Afghanistan has recently embarked on the process of joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO). While increased trade can help lift countries out of poverty, the experience of countries at similar levels of development to Afghanistan's which have joined the WTO suggests that, unless great care is exercised, the terms of that member ship may adversely affect poverty reduction. This paper seeks to identify how Afghanistan can give itself the best possible chance of achieving a WTO accession package that supports its efforts to develop sustainably and to reduce poverty.
Topic:
Development and World Trade Organization
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Asia

17. Oxfam Publishing: Mind the Gap: Countdown to Viet Nam's Accession to the WTO

Author:
Mary Kirkbride
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Viet Nam is entering its final stages of accession negotiations. Although it is unlikely that it will achieve the goal of joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by the time of the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in December, negotiators want a swift end to the process. Analysis of progress madebetween the two Working Party meetings of April and September 2005 reveals that Working Party members are continuing to demand further concessions from the Vietnamese negotiators. If agreed to, these concessions could have potentially damaging consequences for Viet Nam's ability to safeguard the livelihoods of its poorest people.
Topic:
Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and World Trade Organization
Political Geography:
Asia and Vietnam

18. Toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific

Author:
C. Fred Bergsten
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) has proposed that the APEC Leaders at Santiago on November 20-21 “agree to further examine the feasibility and potential scope and features of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).” President Ricardo Lagos of Chile, the host of the APEC summit, has endorsed the concept. I believe that APEC should actively pursue the FTAAP idea. It offers the best prospects of any available strategy for catalyzing a successful outcome of the Doha Round and thus revitalizing the World Trade Organization (WTO). By forging a new transpacific initiative, it can counter the very real risk of disintegration of the Asia-Pacific region that is evident in the progress of Asia-only cooperation on one side of the ocean and a Free Trade Area of the Americas on the other side. It is the best possible device to reenergize APEC's progress toward its own signature trade liberalization goals and thus those of APEC as an institution. It offers a unique win-win-win opportunity that should be seized, beginning at Santiago and then at Pusan a year from now.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Politics, and World Trade Organization
Political Geography:
America and Asia