Status, Challenges and China's Responsible Role in WTO Reform

The World Trade Organization (WTO) faces complex challenges as it carries out reforms given the intertwining interests of its members under the multilateral trading regime. When the WTO fulfills its dispute settlement function, some members differ with each other regarding the interpretations of WTO rules, primarily due to the lack of guidance from new rules and disciplines. The absence of rules and disciplines is largely attributable to the blocked trade negotiation functions of the organization. Therefore, issues such as the stalemate in the dispute settlement mechanism, the blocked trade negotiation functions, and significant disagreements among WTO members are intertwined and interconnected, requiring comprehensive and holistic analysis and assessment. Although the WTO reform has made some progress in areas such as investment facilitation and e-commerce, few substantial breakthroughs have been achieved in terms of reform effect. The bottlenecks of WTO reforms are mainly in the following areas: agricultural issues are bundled with non-agricultural issues, such as industry-related ones, highlighting the complexity of those intertwined issues; developing members have diverse interest demands, posing higher requirements for the flexible design of Special and Differential Treatment (SDT); the rapid development of information technology is reshaping the transparency mechanism, and the old rules are difficult to adapt to the needs of the new situation; and the reform of the dispute settlement mechanism lacks a strong leader, and the current temporary appellate arrangement has failed to fundamentally solve the problem. Since the United States and the European countries lack enthusiasm for WTO reforms and India also has a negative attitude, China should shoulder the special major-power responsibility that matches its size and strength, actively organize reform dialogues, propose reform agenda, and promote the negotiation process for new rules and disciplines, thereby activating the vitality of the multilateral trading system and promoting its development toward a more equal, just and win-win direction.