China and the World Trade Organization

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal had a good story about the background of China getting in the WTO.  It brought back to mind a lot of the rhetoric that surrounded the Clinton White House effort to get China into the organization as a way to push China into a more constructive deal with other world traders.  The language used in 2000 sounds naive by what we have seen since.  China didn't do much it promised, and did not become a better trading partner to other countries.  Robert Lightizer was among those saying it was not such a good idea.  It cost the US about 2.4 million manufacturing jobs, making him sound like a prophet.

While investing in state-owned enterprises went down for a time, over the past three years it started to grow three times faster than it had before.  China had promised not to force companies doing business there to hand over proprietary intellectual property, a promise that was more hollow than we now know.  They didn't say until much later that they would not steal it, but it was not something China could stop doing.  They are hooked on their own criminal success.

There was good and bad in the outcomes for China's behavior after joining the WTO, and this article is well worth the time to read just to go over those.  They are revealing because the world thought China could be a normal business partner that followed the rules of international trade behavior.   We have leaned a lot since then.