Chinese Approaches to Welfare

Abstract

Abstract The chapter outlines the enormous importance of Word Trade Organization (WTO) law to China’s state control and its implications for China’s state-permeated economy and welfare system. The chapter demonstrates the PRC’s contradictory policies, not least by highlighting China’s good compliance record with adverse WTO Dispute Settlement Body rulings and contrasting this with China’s creativity in circumventing implementation of WTO law in the banking sector. In line with the core argument of the book, China’s contradictory policy is traced to trade-offs between different economic and nationalist legitimization needs and the varying degrees of influence of different actors within the party-state. The chapter ends by discussing the implications for the future international order, referencing two modes of action that provide China’s contradictory WTO policy with systemic relevance: China’s instrumental approach to law and its undermining of the key definitions that underpin the core vocabulary of international trade policy.