China and International Trade Law: Rising from Within the System or Always an Outlier?

This chapter critically examines the People’s Republic of China’s engagement with international trade law from the perspectives of rule-taking and rule-making, including China’s pre-reform planned economy-based trade regime, its voluntary internalization of global trade rules in the decade before its World Trade Organization (WTO) accession, trade reform to comply with WTO rules, the China–US trade war (in violation of international trade law) and the Chinese position on WTO reform. It argues that, in its reform and opening-up period (1978–present), China has largely been a rule-taker and a responsible – albeit possibly reluctant at times – status quo power in the United States-led, West-dominated international economic system. On the other hand, it has also taken an instrumentalist approach to international trade law with a foreign trade policy pragmatically oriented towards achieving a balance between trade liberalization and protectionism based on calculated uses of industrial policy tools and non-tariff barriers to support selected domestic industries. © Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2024.