Why the WTO has to rethink China's position - Harry Broadman

Harry Broadman

China's accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was hailed as an important step of the now second-largest economy into the global trade community. But those illusions are over, says trade expert Harry Broadman to Gulfnews. "China has forfeited its right to be treated as a WTO market economy."

Harry Broadman:

At its roots, China isn’t a market-based economy. It’s separation of business and government remains ephemeral; private property rights are still fuzzy, and rarely protected; identification of the beneficial owner(s) and who has ultimate control over decisions within some of the country’s key enterprises is opaque. The large state-owned banks hold little check, if any, over the large backbone state-owned enterprises to whom they lend and often never pay off debts owed.

Communist Party officials occupy some of the most senior positions in the enterprise and financial sectors, including most recently naming the country’s top banking regulator as the party chief and deputy governor of the Central Bank; and foreign investors must transfer technology to Chinese firms if they wish to invest in the country.

At the same time, Trump’s insistence on handling China in a US go-it-alone manner is just plain wrong-headed. We know from his many statements that anything but negotiating on a bilateral basis is anathema to him — a man whose career was built on doing one-off real estate deals in New York. But international trade negotiations are far more nuanced and complex.

Rather than using the “power of collective action” and building a coalition of other major trading powers — many of whom like the US have been exposed to China conducting trade inconsistent with prevailing international norms — Trump’s efforts will have him falling flat on his face.

What’s needed is a fundamental alteration of the treatment of China within the WTO framework — that is, if the WTO is to have any further meaning and survive. It’s finally time to call a spade a spade.

And, it’s also high time for the US to change its trade tactics towards Beijing. It needs to form a coalition of WTO members who make it clear that it really is Beijing’s choice to decide the type of economy it believes China’s population wants.

But that as of now, China has forfeited its right to be treated as a WTO market economy and it has three options: renegotiate its WTO Accession; gracefully exit the WTO; or diplomatically be shown the WTO door.

More at Gulfnews.

Harry Broadman is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.   

The pros and cons of China's market economy for women - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

China's market economy has brought pros and cons to the women, says author Zhang Lijia of the bestseller Lotus: A Novel, on prostitution in China, to the BBC.“I think women have shouldered most of the cost and burden during the transition from a planned economy to the market economy,” she says. She is currently working on a book on the left-behind children in China.

The BBC:

One critic of the reforms, social commentator and author Zhang Lijia, says that China’s shift from a planned economy to a market economy model has brought changes and opportunities for both men and women – particularly urban and educated women. But it has also brought setbacks, including job losses. 

“I think women have shouldered most of the cost and burden during the transition from a planned economy to the market economy,” she says. “For example, [in] ailing state-owned enterprises, women are always [the] first to be let off.” 

Zhang has personal experience of the changes that she wrote about it in her book, Socialism is Great. Growing up in Nanjing, the capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, she started working at a missile factory at the age of 16. The village she lived in served as a residential area for a local machinery factory, which was run by the Ministry of Aerospace Industry. 

“They had a rule that women [of] about 45 years old were let off from my worker unit,” she says, suggesting that this was a blanket rule in place at the factory. 

She thinks the shift to the market economy has allowed more businesses to get away with unscrupulous practices towards female workers in China. “Before, there was this kind of Maoist-style gender equality. Now it’s being replaced by open sexism,” she says. 

Zhang goes on to say that “it’s just so much harder to get jobs because they make extra demands… some companies will refuse to hire women of child-bearing age. And sometimes if a woman gets pregnant, they will sack them. Sometimes they will force women to write that ‘in the next ten years I promise I will not have children.’” 

Recent figures show that women in China’s cities now earn 67.3% of what men make. Meanwhile, for women in the countryside, it’s even less at 56%.

More at the BBC.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more experts on political change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.