Invitation to a lunch seminar: China’s Trade Policy – A Post-crisis Stocktake

In a new paper Razeen Sally examines China’s trade policy since its accession to the WTO. China, he argues, has a mixed record on WTO implementation; a flurry of litigation has followed several years of diplomatic reconciliation in dispute settlement; and China has been passive in the Doha Round. In contrast, it has been very active with PTAs, setting off a “domino effect” in east Asia. But its PTAs are “trade light”, driven more by foreign policy than commercial considerations. Unilateral liberalisation – the driving force of external opening in the 1990s – has stalled. There has been very little “WTO-plus” liberalisation, while measures of selective protection, especially related to foreign investment and industrial-policy targeting, have increased. China’s response to the global economic crisis has reinforced these trends, but it does not represent a dramatic increase in protection or fundamentally reverse China’s opening to the world economy.