China and the WTO: Will the Market Economy Status Make Any Difference after 2016?

Abstract

China’s Protocol of Accession to the World Trade Organization, signed on December 2001, allowed other country members to consider China as a Non-Market Economy (NME) until the end of 2016. The aim of this article is to answer the following question: Can the Market Economy Status (MES) Recognition be measured in its compliance? The proxy used for that compliance was the number of antidumping investigations initiated per country. The expectation is that countries recognizing Chinese MES would initiate fewer antidumping investigations than countries still treating China as a NME. This would explain why the Chinese government has been campaigning vigorously since 2001 to gain MES among its economic partners. Using count-models, we demonstrate that MES had a positive impact in reducing the number of antidumping investigations against Chinese products.