This year will mark the 25th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The occasion in December 2001 sparked an abundance of global optimism that China’s entry into the WTO would embed the country into the U.S.-led liberal international order and encourage China to embrace key Western norms like market-driven economics and political liberalization. It didn’t take long for one of the biggest wagers of the post-war era to go south—think America’s swelling merchandise trade deficit and the gutting of the U.S. manufacturing sector. In just a decade, China’s share of world manufacturing output soared from 8.7% in 2000 to 18.1% in 2010, when it eclipsed the U.S. as the world’s top manufacturer of goods. And while China’s entry into the WTO yielded profits for multinationals and low-cost imports for U.S. consumers, many policymakers are rethinking the costs amid President Xi Jinping’s push for technological self-reliance. Suffice it to say that on the 25th anniversary of China’s entry into the WTO—the high mark of global cooperation and hope for deeper global integration— multilateralism is dead. The consensus in 2001 was that the world would change China. A quarter-century on, however, it’s China that has changed the world.”
Morten W. Langer
