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The WTO dispute settlement system is in crisis due to the persistent blockage of the appointment of Appellate Body members by the United States. This paper reviews the US criticisms against the Appellate Body and argues that its allegations are unfounded and its approach is wrong. To deal with the US blockage, various proposals have been made, with the most popular being the Multiparty Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) set up by several key Members including the European Union and China. After a thorough analysis of the key features of the MPIA from both theoretical and practical perspectives, this paper argues that the MPIA fails to provide a proper solution to the Appellate Body crisis due to its many defects. Instead, the paper suggests the appointment of Appellate Body members based on majority voting at the General Council. This paper concludes by noting that only such a rule-based solution can not only solve the current Appellate Body crisis but also deter similar attempts to sabotage the WTO dispute settlement system in the future.

As one of the busiest trade and travel hubs in the world, Singapore quickly became the worst affected of all countries by COVID-19 in the very early stages of the pandemic. For example, on 5 February 2020, two weeks after the unprecedented lockdown in Wuhan by the Central Government of China, Singapore had the highest infection rate (24 cases out of a population of 5 million) in the world, higher than China (20,502 cases out of a population of 1.5 billion).1 Alongside the health emergency, Singapore also had to cope with another emergency as countries around the world, in a fanatic scramble to fight the pandemic, resorted to restrictions on exports and imports, suspension of international transportation of both goods and people, and the invocation of various emergency powers and exceptions as justifications. As a country with the world's highest trade to GDP ratio at 400 per cent,2 Singapore sees trade as its "lifeline"3 and, with the domino effects of more and more trade restrictions being introduced around the world, the health emergency quickly escalated into a trade emergency threatening not only the prosperity of "the little red dot",4 but even its very survival.

Since its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China's exports have been growing exponentially. In 2009, China became the world's top goods exporter. Four years later, China unseated the United States as the top trading nation in the world. In contrast to the burgeoning Chinese economy, the United States and Europe have been suffering from economic decline since the global financial crisis in 2008. China regards its rise as a long overdue restoration of its rightful position, as it has been the largest economy in the world for most of its history, except the brief aberration over the past 150 years. The Western powers, however, view China's rapid development with suspicion, as they attribute China's success mostly to its state-led development model, with state-owned enterprises, massive subsidies, and heavy government intervention playing a major role.

The regulation of data has increasingly become a common feature of trade agreements. While all regulators would agree on the need to strike a balance between the clashing interests of different stakeholders, their approaches often differ in practice. The various regulatory approaches often reflect the different legal, political, economic, social and cultural backgrounds of different countries. Thereby, it is important to understand the inherent logic and mechanisms of the different regulatory regimes.In this chapter, the focus lies on China, which is not only home to the largest e-commerce market in the world, but also has one of the most tightly regulated cyberspaces. By providing a detailed analysis of the rationale and operation of 'data regulation with Chinese characteristics', the chapter seeks not only to help understand this discrete regulatory model but also to find ways to deal with such a regime at the international level.

Looking back at the China trade policy of the Trump administration, the biggest lesson is that unilateralism simply doesn't work, at least not against a major power like China. Despite the tumultuous two-and-half-year trade war and the Phase 1 deal hailed as an "unprecedented" deal promising "a more balanced trade relationship and a more level playing field for American workers and companies," there has been little progress on the issues U.S. businesses and the Trump administration objected to in China's trade and economic policies. It is not only the U.S. government that needs a more viable approach. Many companies would like to see an alternative policy that addresses what they consider unfair or even sometimes predatory practices by the Chinese government but without resorting to protectionist trade and investment policies in the United States. Imposing tariffs on Chinese imports has been ineffective and has harmed U.S. consumers and companies.