Knocking on WTO’s Door

The last 200 years have witnessed two distinct approaches to the creation of a globalised economy. The first, which reached its fullest expression in the first decade of the twentieth century, was founded on political domination: on colonialism and the use of force to open up markets in developing countries to the products of the economies of western Europe and north America. China struggled against this form of globalisation. The second approach has been more subtle. Since the Second World War, the USA and western Europe in particular have led the way in creating a single space over which capital, commodities, organisations, information and (to a lesser extent) people may more freely roam. Until the late 1970s, China largely ignored and was excluded from these new global forms of economic organisation; since the late 1970s, China has not had to borrow from the IMF and so — unlike virtually all other developing countries — has not had to submit to their control over economic and social policy; yet by September 2001, the world’s pre-eminent regulator of trade, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), had agreed on terms for the admission of China.