With regard to negotiations, China has refused to give up its special and differential developing country status. Attempts to bring more of the companies and agencies of state under them have been foiled by the unhelpful definition of a вЂњpublic bodyвЂќ set down by the WTOвЂ™s dispute settlement system. The subsidies disciplines leave a lot of the huge range of Chinese trade-distorting government interventions uncovered. It has joined the multi-party interim appeal arrangement, the workaround institution that various countries set up after the US put the WTO appellate body into the deep freeze.Д«ut the gaps in the WTO rule book, which was designed for market economies, have become all too obvious.

True, Beijing actually has a fairly good record of complying with the letter of WTO dispute settlement rulings, having for example dismantled state support to its wind turbine industry. Reformers such as Zhu Rongji, Chinese premier from 1998 to 2003, were supplanted by aggressive economic nationalists. ChinaвЂ™s status under WTO rules as a вЂњnon-market economyвЂќ was even given a pre-determined expiry date.

The assumption was that the arc of Chinese development was long but that it bent towards capitalism. It joined in December 2001 following a decade of enthusiasm about the irresistible march of globalisation.

Rich countries have a pretty standard narrative about ChinaвЂ™s membership of the World Trade Organization, which goes like this.

Chinese lost saga