Accusing China of Challenging Multilateral Trade Rules Like Saying Black Is White

Recently the Office of the United States Trade Representative released its “2022 Report to Congress on China’s WTO Compliance.” This denied China’s achievements in fulfilling its World Trade Organization accession commitments and arbitrarily accused China’s economic and trade regime and its trade policies of posing serious challenges to the multilateral trading system. The whole thing is full of slanderous distortions. Since its accession to the WTO, China has fully met its commitments and made great contributions to the development of the WTO and to the multilateral system. Some in the U.S. may continue to smear China, but it is in fact the U.S. which is the greatest wrecker of the WTO and multilateral trading.

If you look at China’s accession obligations and the timetable as stipulated in the WTO accession protocol and other documents, you can clearly see that China has already met its WTO obligations in full and that the liberalization commitments made by China have also been fully implemented. For example, since China’s accession to the WTO, the central government has tidied up more than 2,000 pieces of legislation and departmental regulations while local governments have tackled more than 190,000 local policies and regulations. To strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, China has established intellectual property courts and tribunals in Beijing and elsewhere and has promptly notified the WTO of the adjustment and application of these domestic laws and regulations, submitting more than 1,000 updates.

By contrast, the U.S. has unilaterally engaged in trade bullying, exploited double standards in industrial policy and disrupted the global industrial supply chain. It increasingly lacks respect for WTO and international trade rules, seriously undermining the authority and effectiveness of the multilateral system.

In recent years the WTO has repeatedly reviewed the trade policy of the U.S. Many WTO members have criticized its unilateral protectionist trade policies and urged it to fulfill its obligations within the multilateral trading system. However, the U.S. continues to follow practices that go against the fundamental principles of the multilateral trading framework. For example, it refuses to implement a large number of dispute settlement rulings that have already entered into effect, continues to unilaterally impose widespread and high tariffs through its domestic law, encourages “decoupling” and “breaking the chain” and abuses long-arm jurisdiction to force other WTO members to submit to U.S. domestic law.

The U.S. has repeatedly abused WTO processes to unilaterally obstruct the selection of new members of the appellate body. This has seriously disrupted the normal functioning of the WTO. At the WTO dispute settlement body meeting held on Feb. 27, a proposal by 127 WTO members to restart the selection process for new appellate body judges failed once again because of U.S. opposition. This is the 63rd time that the proposal has been blocked.

The U.S. is trampling on multilateral trade rules while slandering and vilifying China. Its despicable actions are repugnant to the international community, and it is being shunned more and more by fair-minded people around the world. If the U.S. does not repent and continues to jeopardize the global economic and trade system with its lies and bullying hegemony, it will not only cause immeasurable loss and harm to world economic recovery but also in the end hurt itself too, because the interconnected bonds of the global economy are unbreakable.