Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T03:05:52.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sunshine over Shanghai: Can the WTO Illuminate the Murky World of Chinese SOEs?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2017

ROBERT WOLFE
ROBERT WOLFE*
Affiliation:
School of Policy Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, ON
*
Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are a major force in the Chinese economy and a growing presence in international trade and investment. The challenge to the WTO legal regime is commercial, given the size of SOEs and their share of Chinese output, and political, given worries that trade and investment by SOEs may be driven by public policy goals. And both challenges may be exacerbated by the murky world of Chinese SOEs. In this article, I first review whether Chinese SOEs are a problem for the WTO, and whether more sunshine on their operations might be a useful discipline. I then ask what we know about SOEs inside the WTO, including in the Trade Policy Review Mechanism. Since the answer is, not much, I consider whether mega-regional trade negotiations offer a better approach. My answer being negative, I finally consider whether an attempt to negotiate a WTO Reference Paper on SOEs might help. I conclude that transparency is likely to be a better discipline on the spillovers associated with SOEs than a search for binding rules, while also helping everyone better understand the efficiency effects.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Trade Review , Volume 16 , Issue 4: Symposium on State-Owned Enterprises in China , October 2017 , pp. 713 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © Robert Wolfe 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am grateful to Thomas Bollyky, Cary Coglianese, Daniel Goldbloom, Bernard Hoekman, Petros Mavroidis, and Charles Sabel, and to officials in Global Affairs Canada and the WTO Secretariat, for helpful suggestions that I draw on without further attribution. This article was prepared for the seminar on ‘State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in China: Trade and Competition Issues’, Columbia Law School, 21 November 2016.

References

Biau, C., Capobianco, A., Chammas, M. et al. (2016), ‘Governments as Competitors in the Global Marketplace: Options for Ensuring a Level Playing Field’, ICTSD/WEF, E15 Task Force on Investment Policy Think Piece, February 2016.Google Scholar
Brandeis, L. D. (1914), Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It, New York: F.A. Stokes.Google Scholar
Canada (2012), ‘Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Public Report 2010–2011’, Public Works and Government Services Canada, September 2012.Google Scholar
Canada (2016a), ‘Evidence [Kirsten Hillman]’, House of Commons, Standing Committee on International Trade, Number 003, 1st Session, 42nd Parliament, 18 February 2016.Google Scholar
Canada (2016b), ‘Evidence [Hon. Chrystia Freeland]’, House of Commons, Standing Committee on International Trade, Number 049, 1st Session, 42nd Parliament, 1 December 2016.Google Scholar
Coglianese, C. (2009), ‘The Transparency President? The Obama Administration and Open Government’, Governance, 22(4): 529–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins-Williams, T. and Wolfe, R. (2010), ‘Transparency as a Trade Policy Tool: The Wto's Cloudy Windows’, World Trade Review, 9(4): 551–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delisle, J. (2009), ‘The Other China Trade Deficit: Export Safety Problems and Responses’, in Coglianese, C., Finkel, A. M., and Zaring, D. (eds.), Import Safety : Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 22–49.Google Scholar
He, A. (2016), ‘China and Global Trade Governance’, Centre for International Governance Innovation, CIGI Papers No. 104, May 2016.Google Scholar
Hoekman, B. M. and Mavroidis, P. C. (2016), ‘MFN Clubs and Scheduling Additional Commitments in the GATT: Learning from the GATS’, European University Institute, EUI Working Paper RSCAS 2016/06, January 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IMF (2016), ‘The People's Republic of China 2016 Article IV Consultation – Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the People's Republic of China’, International Monetary Fund, IMF Country Report No. 16/270 August 2016.Google Scholar
Inside US Trade (2015), ‘China Won't Make New Gpa Offer, Leaving Accession Talks at Standstill’, 25 September 2015.Google Scholar
Inside US Trade (2016), ‘USTR Aims to Push Aspects of TPP in Plurilateral, Multilateral Contexts’, 26 February 2016.Google Scholar
Kawase, T. (2014), ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Rulemaking to Regulate State-Owned Enterprises’, VoxEU.org, 29 July 2014.Google Scholar
Kowalski, P., Büge, M., Sztajerowska, M., and Egeland, M. (2013), ‘State-Owned Enterprises: Trade Effects and Policy Implications’, OECD Trade Policy Working Paper No. 147, March 2013.Google Scholar
Mavroidis, P. C. (2016a), The Regulation of International Trade, Volume 2: The WTO Agreements on Trade in Goods, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mavroidis, P. C. (2016b), The Regulation of International Trade, Volume 1: GATT, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mavroidis, P. C. and Wolfe, R. (2015), ‘From Sunshine to a Common Agent: The Evolving Understanding of Transparency in the WTO’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, 21(2): 117–129.Google Scholar
Mavroidis, P. C. and Wolfe, R. (2017), ‘Private Standards and the WTO: Reclusive No More’, World Trade Review, 16(1): 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miner, S. (2016), ‘Commitments on State-Owned Enterprises’, in Schott, J. J. and Cimino-Isaacs, C. (eds.), Assessing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Volume 2: Innovations in Trading Rules Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, pp. 335–348.Google Scholar
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2014), The Size and Sectoral Distribution of SOEs in OECD and Partner Countries, Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2015a), State-Owned Enterprises in the Development Process, Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2015b), OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises, Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2016a), State-Owned Enterprises as Global Competitors: A Challenge or an Opportunity? Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2016b), Risk Management by State-Owned Enterprises and Their Ownership, Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Pérez Motta, E. (2016), ‘Competition Policy and Trade in the Global Economy: Towards an Integrated Approach’, WEF/ICTSD, E15 Expert Group on Competition Policy and the Trade System – Policy Options Paper January 2016.Google Scholar
Potter, P. B. (2014), Assessing Treaty Performance in China: Trade and Human Rights, Vancouver: UBC Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prusa, T. J. and Vermulst, E. (2013), ‘United States Definitive Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duties on Certain Products from China: Passing the Buck on Pass-Through’, World Trade Review, 12(2): 197–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sauvant, K. P. and Nolan, M. D. (2015), ‘China's Outward Foreign Direct Investment and International Investment Law’, Journal of International Economic Law, 18(4): 893–934.Google Scholar
Shaffer, G., Wolfe, R., and Le, V. (2015), ‘Can Informal Law Discipline Subsidies?’, Journal of International Economic Law, 18(4): 711–41.Google Scholar
Sultan Balbuena, S. (2016), ‘Concerns Related to the Internationalisation of State-Owned Enterprises: Perspectives from Regulators, Government Owners and the Broader Business Community’, OECD Corporate Governance Working Papers, No. 19.Google Scholar
Sylvestre, F. J. and Marcoux, J.-M. (2016), ‘The US Shaping of State-Owned Enterprise Disciplines in the Trans-Pacific Partnership’, Journal of International Economic Law, 19(2): 445–465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United States (2014), ‘2014 Report to Congress on China's WTO Compliance’, United States Trade Representative, December 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United States (2015), Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015, Pl 114-26, Title I, Section 102, https://www.Congress.Gov/114/Plaws/Publ26/Plaw-114publ26.Pdf.Google Scholar
Wang, P. (2009), ‘China's Accession to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement: Challenges and the Way Forward’, Journal of International Economic Law, 12(3): 663–706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfe, R. (2013), ‘Letting the Sun Shine in at the WTO: How Transparency Brings the Trading System to Life’, World Trade Organization, Staff Working Paper ERSD-2013-03, March 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfe, R. (2015), ‘An Anatomy of Accountability at the WTO’, Global Policy, 6(1): 13–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfe, R. (2016), ‘Canadian Trade Policy in a G-Zero World: Preferential Negotiations as a Natural Experiment’, in Van Assche, A., Tapp, S., and Wolfe, R. (eds.), Redesigning Canadian Trade Policies for New Global Realities, Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2001), ‘Report of the Working Party on the Accession of China’, World Trade Organization, WT/ACC/CHN/49, 1 October 2001.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2003), ‘Questionnaire Format for Subsidy Notifications under Article 25 of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures and under Article XVI of GATT 1994’, World Trade Organization, Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures: G/SCM/6/Rev.1, 11 November 2003.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2014), ‘Trade Policy Review China: Report by the Secretariat’, Trade Policy Review Body, World Trade Organization, WT/TPR/S/300/Rev.1, 7 October 2014.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2015a), ‘Overview of Developments in the International Trading Environment: Annual Report by the Director-General’, World Trade Organization, WT/TPR/OV/18, 17 November 2015.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2015b), ‘Trade Policy Review, Report by the Secretariat: The European Union’, Trade Policy Review Body, World Trade Organization, 21 October 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2016a), ‘Trade Policy Review China: Report by the Secretariat’, Trade Policy Review Body, World Trade Organization, WT/TPR/S/342, 15 June 2016.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2016b), ‘Trade Policy Review China: Minutes of the Meeting, 20 and 22 July 2016’, Trade Policy Review Body, World Trade Organization, WT/TPR/M/342, 26 September 2016.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2016c), ‘Trade Policy Review China: Minutes of the Meeting, 20 and 22 July 2016, Addendum’, Trade Policy Review Body, World Trade Organization, WT/TPR/M/342/Add.1, 28 October 2016.Google Scholar
Wu, Mark (2016), ‘The “China, Inc.” Challenge to Global Trade Governance’, Harvard International Law Journal, 57(2).Google Scholar
Yun, M. (2016), ‘An Analysis of the New Trade Regime for State-Owned Enterprises under the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’, Journal of East Asian Economic Integration, 20(1), 3–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar