China’s Participation in the World Trade Organization: Trade in Goods, Services, Intellectual Property Rights and Transparency Issues

Abstract

During the negotiations and after the accession China has started a massive process of amendment of its domestic laws and regulations regarding all the sectors covered by WTO rules. As any new member of the WTO, China needed to reform the main sectors of its legislation on: trade in goods, trade in services, trade-related intellectual property rights and to start to deeply apply the more general WTO transparency principle. The paper analyses in particular the TRIPs implementation in China.

Keywords: China, WTO, GATS, GATT, intellectual property rights, market access, agriculture, services, subsidies, technical barriers to trade, financial services, banking services, insurance services, TRIPs, transparency, uniform administration rule, US