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"Amid the ongoing crisis surrounding the WTO, China's role and behaviour in the multilateral trading system has attracted overwhelming attention. This timely monograph provides the first comprehensive and systemic analysis of China's compliance with the rulings of the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism (DSM). It covers all the disputes in which China has been a respondent during its 17-year WTO membership and offers a detailed discussion of China's implementation of adverse WTO rulings, its approaches to settling WTO disputes, the possible explanations for such approaches, and post-compliance issues. The book shows how China has utilised the limitations and flexibilities of WTO rulings to ensure that its implementation of the rulings not only delivers adequate compliance but also maintains its own interests. Overall, this book argues that the issues relating to the quality of China's compliance and post-compliance practices concern the loopholes within the DSM itself which may be utilised by all WTO Members. However, despite the loopholes, China's record of compliance suggests that the DSM has been largely effective in inducing compliance and influencing domestic policy-making. It is therefore in the interest of all WTO Members and other stakeholders to protect the DSM as the 'crown jewel' of the multilateral trading system"--

ABSTRACT
This paper challenges the widespread view that the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) provides the most advanced rules for regulating China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs). It argues that compared to China's existing World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations, particularly those specifically tailored to it, the CPTPP SOE chapter does not provide more rigorous or workable rules but rather has narrower applications and more carve-outs. More recent US/EU free trade agreements (FTAs) are largely based on the CPTPP SOE chapter. While these FTAs also seek to address some deficiencies in the CPTPP SOE chapter and gradually expand the rules on subsidies and SOEs, the expanded rules are balanced by the inclusion of extensive exceptions. This balanced approach may be used to facilitate multilateral negotiations of SOE rules, but if this approach is adopted, WTO Members will need to be prepared to negotiate with China on replacing the potentially very broad and rigid China-specific WTO rules with more balanced new rules that apply to all members. The likely consequence would be softer rather than stronger disciplines on Chinese SOEs.

For more than seven decades, the multilateral trading system has played an essential role in promoting international cooperation on trade policymaking and dispute resolution. As theWTOis being pushed toward the verge of irrelevance, it falls upon us, who believe in the utility of the WTO and multilateralism in general, to defend its legitimacy and significance. Taking theoretical and doctrinal approaches as well as case studies, this article expounds on the fundamental function of the system as being to discipline the use of protectionist policy instruments for trade or non-trade objectives and draws on the significance of the Theory of Distortions and Welfare in providing powerful economic guidance for how the system may operate to achieve a proper balance between the regulation of protectionist instruments and the preservation of policy space. Furthermore, this article shows how the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism, particularly the Appellate Body, has served the underlying function of the system by contributing to disincentivizing governments from responding to protectionist demands of special interest groups but leaving sufficient latitude of discretion for governments to accommodate nontrade interests. This article cautions that if theWTOdoes collapse and potential adverse economic and political ramifications materialize, then the political need for international trade cooperation and rulesbased dispute resolution will quickly return. By then, the best way to address that need in pursuit of long-term peace and prosperity would be to rebuild a multilateral trading system.
WTO, Trade War, Protectionism, Multilateral trading system, Non-trade values, Dispute Settlement, Appellate Body, Economic efficiency.