In the 20 years since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China’s role in the world economy has grown enormously but has also become increasingly contested.

The re-internationalisation of the Chinese economy, beginning in the late 1970s, yielded enormous economic benefits for China and the rest of the world. China’s formal entry into the rules-based multilateral system from 2001 was widely expected to cement China’s domestic economic reforms and provide incentives for China to become a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the international system. It was hoped, although not necessarily assumed, that greater economic engagement with the rest of the world would lead to bottom-up social liberalisation and greater pluralism, even if expectations for top-down political liberalisation on the part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remained low.

Today, by contrast, China’s role in the world economy is seen as increasingly problematic. China’s entry into the global economy and accession to the WTO is thought by many to have inflicted a negative shock to the US economy which fed the rise of populist politics. The WTO has seemingly failed to discipline China’s illiberal trade practices and market-distorting industrial policies, with the CCP embracing a state-led economic development model with renewed vigour. The WTO now must intermediate between the world’s two largest economies in an environment of growing strategic competition rather than economic engagement.