China and the World Trade Organization

Abstract

China’s rising economic clout in both regional and international economic institutions has caused considerable unease about whether Beijing might push for major reforms and restructuring within the World Trade Organization to serve its core economic interests. A growing strand of literature on ‘Rising China’ portrays Beijing as a potential challenge to the existing global economic order. Notwithstanding such predictions, compounded by relocation of powers in the global economic system in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, China appears unable to position itself as a challenger to the multilateral trading system and by extension to the extant economic order owing to a set of domestic constraints. This article attempts to critically examine the assertions of revisionist China in the WTO and its implications for the global economic order. The article seeks to develop two important explanatory models using domestic–political and ideational factors alongside the traditional focus on structural factors. These models would offer a nuanced understanding of how Chinese domestic politics and institutional ideologies play out in the domain of international institutional engagement.