Pan Rui, "China’s WTO Membership and the Non-Market Economy Status: discrimination and impediment to China’s foreign trade",Journal of Contemporary China, Vol.24, Issue 94, 2015, pp.742-757.

This article provides a Chinese perspective on the terms of China’s WTO accession, highlighting the negative impact of some discriminatory conditions that China accepted in order to join the WTO on its foreign trade and global competitiveness in the last decade. The author uses the non-market economy status of China as a case study to support the argument that these discriminatory conditions imposed on China upon accession have not only impeded the healthy development of China’s foreign trade, but also violated the ‘non-discrimination’ principle of the WTO.

Introduction
After more than a decade of prolonged and arduous negotiations, China finally became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of 2001. One of the main goals of China’s accession to the WTO was to create a better and more stable environment for the country’s international trade. However, China’s WTO membership has not brought about a fair and equitable trading environment as China’s foreign trade still encounters a number of unfriendly WTO rules and regulations. They are what China committed to upon its accession to the WTO, so the use of these rules and regulations by other WTO members is WTO-consistent, but such use has resulted in the discriminatory treatment of Chinese firms. For instance, the non-market economy provisions of The Protocol of China’s Accession to the WTO have, at least partially, led to hundreds of anti-dumping cases against China since 2001. Nevertheless, China’s foreign trade has developed rapidly since it became a member of the WTO. Such extraordinary achievements stand in sharp contrast with the unfair trade environment it still faces.

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