Brown Bag Seminar: "Between Market Economy and State Capitalism: China's State-Owned Enterprises and the World Trading System"

One major issue facing the world trading system today is how to deal with the challenge of China’s state capitalism. Many commentators believe that the existing WTO rules are insufficient and, thus, new rules are needed. This book challenges this conventional wisdom. Through meticulous studies and fresh analysis of the commitments in China’s WTO accession package, existing rules on state capitalism in WTO agreements and recent attempts to make new rules on these issues at bilateral, regional and multilateral levels, this book argues that existing WTO rules, especially those on subsidies, coupled with China-specific rules in its accession protocol, do provide feasible tools to counter China’s state capitalism. This book also discusses the reasons for the lack of usage of these rules and provides concrete policy suggestions on how the rules may be better utilized, as well as how to conduct constructive negotiations on new rules in the WTO and beyond.

Speaker's biography

Henry Gao is Professor of Law at Singapore Management University and Senior Fellow at CIGI. With law degrees from three continents, he started his career as the first Chinese lawyer at the WTO Secretariat. He has been an advisor on trade issues for many national governments as well as the WTO, UN, World Bank, ADB, APEC, ASEAN and the World Economic Forum. Widely published on China and WTO and digital trade issues, he sits on the Advisory Board of the WTO Chairs Program, as well as the editorial boards of the Journal of International Economic Law and Journal of Financial Regulation. His new book “Between Market Economy and State Capitalism: China’s State-Owned Enterprises and the World Trading System” is published by Cambridge University Press in November 2022.

We strongly encourage you to attend this event on-site. In case you cannot be present in person, you can use the following Zoom link to tune in virtually: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkdOiqqD4qGd1M6WAET0nn9yskOoAfwndD