China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was heralded as historic, and for good reason: the world's most populous nation was joining the rule-based system that has governed international commerce since World War II. But the full ramifications of that event are only now becoming apparent, as the Chinese economic juggernaut has evolved in unanticipated and profoundly troublesome ways. In this book, journalist Paul Blustein chronicles the contentious process resulting in China's WTO membership and the transformative changes that followed, both good and bad - for China, for its trading partners, and for the global trading system as a whole. The book recounts how China opened its markets and underwent far-reaching reforms that fuelled its economic takeoff, but then adopted policies - a cheap currency and heavy-handed state intervention - that unfairly disadvantaged foreign competitors and circumvented WTO rules. Events took a potentially catastrophic turn in 2018 with the eruption of a trade war between China and the United States, which has brought the trading system to a breaking point. Regardless of how the latest confrontation unfolds, the world will be grappling for decades with the challenges posed by China Inc.

China's extraordinarily rapid economic growth since 1978, driven by market-oriented reforms, has set world records and continued unabated, despite predictions of an inevitable slowdown. In The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China?, renowned China scholar Nicholas R. Lardy argues that China's future growth prospects could be equally bright but are shadowed by the specter of resurgent state dominance, which has begun to diminish the vital role of the market and private firms in China's economy. Lardy's book arrives in timely fashion as a sequel to his pathbreaking Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China, published by PIIE in 2014. This book mobilizes new data to trace how President Xi Jinping has consistently championed state-owned or controlled enterprises, encouraging local political leaders and financial institutions to prop up ailing, underperforming companies that are a drag on China's potential. As with his previous book, Lardy's perspective departs from conventional wisdom, especially in its contention that China could achieve a high growth rate for the next two decades—if it reverses course and returns to the path of market-oriented reforms.

We use micro data collected at the border and at retailers to characterize the effects brought by recent changes in US trade policy - particularly the tariffs placed on imports from China - on importers, consumers, and exporters. We start by documenting that the tariffs were almost fully passed through to total prices paid by importers, suggesting the tariffs' incidence has fallen largely on the United States. Since we estimate the response of prices to exchange rates to be far more muted, the recent depreciation of the Chinese renminbi is unlikely to alter this conclusion. Next, using product-level data from several large multi-national retailers, we demonstrate that the impact of the tariffs on retail prices is more mixed. Some affected product categories have seen sharp price increases, but the difference between affected and unaffected products is generally quite modest, suggesting that retail margins have fallen. These retailers' imports increased after the initial announcement of possible tariffs, but before their full implementation, so the intermediate passthrough of tariffs to their prices may not persist. Finally, in contrast to the case of foreign exporters facing US tariffs, we show that US exporters lowered their prices on goods subjected to foreign retaliatory tariffs compared to exports of non-targeted goods.

'The author has skilfully distilled a sea of data into a readable book on the current US-China trade spats … A valuable resource for those wishing to untangle the present complicated economic relationship between China and the US.'CHOICEUS vs China: From Trade War to Reciprocal Deal gives readers an up close account on the rough-and-tumble trade talks between the US and China. The book provides a neutral and balanced perspective in addressing the historical, political and cultural backgrounds that had made US-China trade wars inevitable, but also explores how the two richest and most powerful countries and long-time rivals may eventually reach a consensus to support a bilateral trade agreement for the ages.Related Link(s)

This innovative Research Handbook explores the complex and controversial interactions between intellectual property (IP) and investment law. In light of recent developments at national, European and international levels, the chapters critically examine the legitimacy of current practices with regard to the social function of IP rights and the regulatory autonomy of States to undertake measures in the public interest.

A close-up look at the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong in the Shadow of China is a reflection on the recent political turmoil in Hong Kong during which the Chinese government insisted on gradual movement toward electoral democracy and hundreds of thousands of protesters occupied major thoroughfares to push for full democracy now. Fueling this struggle is deep public resentment over growing inequality and how the political system—established by China and dominated by the local business community—reinforces the divide been those who have profited immensely and those who struggle for basics such as housing. Richard Bush, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on East Asia Policy Studies, takes us inside the demonstrations and the demands of the demonstrators and then pulls back to critically explore what Hong Kong and China must do to ensure both economic competitiveness and good governance and the implications of Hong Kong developments for United States policy.

This book provides readers with a unique opportunity to learn about one of the new regional trade agreements (RTAs), the China–Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), that has been operational since December 2015 and is now at the forefront of the field. This new agreement reflects many of the modern and up-to-date approaches within the international economic legal order that must now exist within a very different environment than that of the late eighties and early nineties, when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created. The book, therefore, explores many new features that were not present when the WTO or early RTAs were negotiated. It provides insights and lessons about new and important trade issues for the twenty-first century, such as the latest approaches to the regulation of investment, twenty-first century services and the emerging digital/knowledge economy. In addition, this book provides new understandings of the latest RTA approaches of China and Australia. The book's contributors, all foremost experts on their subject matter within this field, explore the inclusion of many traditional trade and investment agreement features in the ChAFTA, showing their continuing relevance in modern contexts.