Emerging Scholars Policy Prize, China, International Trade & Finance How the WTO Changed China: The Mixed Legacy of Economic Engagement

Yeling Tan, one of the winners of the Perry World House-Foreign Affairs 2020 Emerging Scholars Policy Prize, has had her winning piece published in Foreign Affairs.

When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the event was hailed as a pivotal development for the global economic system and a bold marker of the country’s commitment to reform. It took 15 long years of negotiation to reach the deal, a reflection of the challenge of reconciling China’s communist command economy with global trading rules and of the international community’s insistence that China sign on to ambitious commitments and conditions. U.S. officials had high hopes that those terms of entry would fix China on the path of market liberalization and integrate the country into the global economic order. U.S. President Bill Clinton called Beijing’s accession to the WTO “the most significant opportunity that we have had to create positive change in China since the 1970s” and argued that it would “commit China to play by the rules of the international trading system.”

Read more in Foreign Affairs >>