China has taken full advantage of its WTO rights. It has also largely ignored the responsibilities and commitments through its embrace of state-directed capitalism predicated upon an aggressive innovation mercantilism. This mercantilism denies foreign enterprises access to Chinese markets on reciprocal terms; distorts global markets, including for advanced-technology goods; and deprives nations of the benefits they believed they would receive when granting China accession into the community of trading nations.

In this report, China’s accession to the WTO is recounted along with the trade rules with which it fails to comply. The report also describes the economic benefits China has accrued in part by not complying with its WTO commitments. Lastly, it offers policy recommendations for policymakers from the United States and like-minded nations to address the continuing China trade challenge. Our initial 2015 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) report on this topic, on which this report is based, is premised on China’s false promises to the WTO. Even with a full-scale Section 301 investigation initiated by the Trump administration, China has made little progress in fulfilling a wide range of its WTO commitments over the past two decades.

Stephen Ezell is vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He focuses on science and technology policy, international competitiveness, trade, manufacturing, and services issues.

To read the original report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, please visit here

The post False Promises II: The Continuing Gap Between China’s WTO Commitments and Its Practices appeared first on WITA.

Manufacturers’ stockpiles reported to the government show that 188.4 tonnes of raw tortoiseshell existed in 1995, of which 28.7 tonnes (15%) remained by 2017. The number of businesses holding stocks did not change drastically, going from 222 in 1998 to 175 in 2017. Given the infrequent government spot checks, continuing incoming seizures of tortoiseshells and their links to the active manufacturing industry, it is highly questionable whether the reported stockpiles truly refl ect the actual tortoiseshell stocks in the country. Current domestic legislation relies primarily on manufacturers self-reporting their transaction records and stockpile balance and exempts most tortoiseshell products (except for whole specimens/carapaces) from registration requirements. This lax legislation likely exacerbates the entry of illegally sourced raw material into the domestic supply chain. Finally, a snapshot survey of a major online auction platform revealed that a minimum of 8,202 sales of hawksbill products (unused and secondhand) took place in 2019, totalling JPY102 million (USD936, 850). Fewer than 1% of these sales fell under the domestic legislation, leaving the remainder as legal trade but effectively unregulated given the lack of rules governing trade in fi nished products. In light of the evidence presented here, this study concludes Japan should: 1) strengthen law enforcement to tackle illegal trade with traceability controls; 2) tighten control of stockpiles and domestic trade regulations; 3) introduce voluntary bans on online sales of tortoiseshell by e-commerce companies 

To read the full report online, please click here.

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