China Since its WTO Membership: An Exploration

 

Speaker: Dr. Biswajit Dhar, Professor & Head, Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. Dr. Dhar has been working extensively on the multilateral trading system for more than two decades

 

 

 

Chair: Ambassador Jayant Dasgupta, former Ambassador to WTO

 

 

 

China’s experience as a WTO member raises a number of important questions many of which need to be explored and explained. The most intriguing is that while most developing countries, including India and Brazil, were complaining about the constraints they had faced in the WTO to protect their interests, China was able to expand rapidly in international markets. On hindsight, it is obvious that China used its WTO membership to considerable advantage. How was it able to do this? What did China do so strikingly different from other developing countries to make such a big difference on the international stage? And can developing countries draw lessons from China’s engagement with the WTO and replicate them, at least partially?

 

 

 

(Collaboration: Institute of Chinese Studies)