China and the WTOby Joe "Kid" KingResearch for the 21st Century : Fall 2004 |
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"China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been hailed as the biggest coming-out party in the history of capitalism." Nicholas Lardy INTRODUCTIONWhat are the affects of China’s step into the center of the global economy? This Pathfinder will guide you to the best information in reference to China’s accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the economic and political implications for China and the rest of the world. Not only in the last four years, since China’s entrance into the global economy, has China’s economy sustained rapid growth, but also in the eighties and nineties; but this focuses on the effects of the WTO on the Chinese economy. This pathfinder is also concerned with the political controversies surrounding China’s WTO accession and adherence to their commitments. Topic AnalysisAcademic Disciplines
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Library of Congress Classification numbers
KeywordsIn retrieving relevant material from indexes and databases, I used the following key terms, among others:
Description of my keyword search strategy:My experience in finding Subject Headings and terms that worked was pretty easy as I found the best keywords right off: +China +WTO; which focused my results very well. Sometimes I had a lot of irrelevant results but the addition of the third keyword, accession, focused the results satisfactorily every time. I had some trouble finding anything on some databases and resolved that there was just nothing there for me to find. Most Important Databases and Periodical Indexes
REFERENCE SOURCESOrganizationsChina Reform Monitor<http://www.afpc.org/crm/crmmain.htm> This site is maintained and sponsored by the American Foreign Policy Council; and has scores of documents which have recorded the process of China’s entry into the WTO from three years before their actual accession to January of 2003. WTO Accession Monitor<http://www.tdctrade.com/wto/?ID=g_Chinatrade_wto_china> This site has a wealth of articles that are organized intor groups of information related to China and the WTO; each group is then ordered chronologically. Some of the more narrowly focused groups are Accession Precess, and Laws and Regulations. It is fully searchable and has simplistic navigation.
Statistics
United States. U.S.Census Bureau. Foreign Trade Statistics.
U.S. Imports from Articles in Reference Books"Agriculture and Food Supplies." Encyclopedia Britannica.
2004. Encyclopedia This article is the Britannica Book of the Year 2000 from the Agriculture and Food Supplies article. It will provide my pathfinder with a brief understanding of what the United States and China were negotiating as China considered their accession into the WTO. It is an interesting account of the negotiations between China and the US directly preceding its accession into the WTO. Bankston III, Carl L. "China's Economy." World
Conflicts: This is a special encyclopedia that
specializes in the subjects relevant to Asia and the Middle East.
This brief article discusses the present state of China’s economy.
It will provide us with a brief description of China’s economy after
their entry into the WTO. BOOKSLardy, Nicholas R. Integrating China into the Global
Economy. Washington DC: Nicholas Lardy is an author who is a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies. He seems to be an authority on this topic; included in this pathfinder is an article which was the his testimony before the US-China Security Review Commission. In this particular book, he discusses China’s accession into the WTO, pre-WTO trade reforms, China in the world economy, and how this relates to the United States. To explain why I should have this book in my pathfinder, I yield to John H. Jackson of the Georgetown University Law Center who said of this book: “No one who requires knowledge of the global impact of China’s membership in the WTO should be without this book.” Panitchpakdi, Supachai, and Mark Clifford. China and the WTO :
Changing China, Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, the main author of this book, is the Director-General of the World Trade Organization; he began his career the year this book was published (2002) and will serve a three years term. Mark Clifford, the contributing author, is the Hong Kong-based Regional Editor for Business Week. This book discusses the struggles facing China as it attempts to uphold its commitments to the WTO, and its failures to do so as yet. It also talks about the strains that will be placed on the rest of the global economy, and the shift in the balance of global power as China overtakes Japan and matches the economic power of the US. This book will provide an honest perspective on the complications with China’s Accession into the WTO. PERIODICAL ARTICLESChandler, Clay. “Acceptance Doesn't Mean Compliance.” The
Washington Post 25 May Clay Chandler is an author for The Washington Post and Fortune magazine. This article discusses the US/China trade relations friction and how China’s entry into the WTO will level the playing field with Japan and Europe. It also explains how the expected access to China’s market for U.S. companies may require some waiting as this article raises doubts about whether China will comply with the WTO. As this article is somewhat old it may not be as good of a resource as the other articles which can approach the topic from a historical perspective rather than projections. This article provides an understanding of the controversies surrounding China’s entry into the WTO at the time it happened. Greider, William. “China and Globalism.” Nation 5 June 2000: 3
pages. William Greider is The Nation's national affairs correspondent. This article has comments about the approval of China’s membership to the WTO and the consequences thereof. It also speaks of the lack of the WTO’s ability to effectively impose it’s free trade ideology in China. It also speaks of the opposition of organized labor. The author is pointing out that we need to be patient with China and that will require a change from the current free-market zeal; that China is the sign of things to come insofar as this change is adopted. From this article we can learn about the political future of China in the global economy. Murphy, David. “Riding the Tiger of Trade.” Far Eastern
Economic Review Nov. 22, David Murphy writes for the Far East Economic Review. He predicts that China’s entry into the WTO will not go smoothly as he sites and explains problems with trading soya beans to the U.S. that current at the time of the article. He discusses the Communist Party’s influence in China and notes that, because of poorly managed State companies, China may not play by WTO’s rules. This article will help us to discover what political controversies there are, surrounding the Communist Party and China’s adherence to the WTO. INTERNET SOURCESLardy, Nicholas R. “Issues in China’s WTO Accession.” The
U.S.-China Security Review This article was found in The Brooking
Institution’s scholarly Web site, for which Nicholas R. Lardy, the
author, is a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies. The
information is exhaustive and very well written; even though it is
scholarly, I could understand what he had to say about the state of
China’s economy before their accession into the WTO, why they made
the decision to do so, what this means to the United States, and his
summary of the commitments. This article was the author’s testimony
before the US-China Security Review Commission. The information in
this site provides an unbiased and solid understanding of China’s
considerations and motivations for entering the WTO. This page was
well organized and designed for the Web; it offered links to much
more information that was organized by subject headings, and listed
under research topics. It was aesthetically pleasing and loaded
quickly, which I appreciate, and it was easy to understand its
navigation. It also was a searchable Web site, that is, it offered a
search box which yielded about 1120 articles from my best search
terms. United States. American Foreign Policy Council. Review of PRC
government actions and US This site is maintained and sponsored by
the American Foreign Policy Council; and has scores of documents
which have recorded the process of China’s entry into the WTO from
three years before their actual accession to January of 2003. This
site will provide us with historical references to the events that
have transpired during this controversial transformation as this is
the purpose of this entire Web site. The articles are brief and
unbiased; and, again, written from a historical perspective. The
site is organized fairly well in its extreme simplicity; the
horizontal navigation bar is no longer available and you must back
out of the articles once you’ve read them but they are categorized
and subcategorized by date so this is not at all confusing. While
this information is not extremely current, it is historical. There
are very few graphics; they are large but not obtrusive or too large
to slow the pages loading time. I chose this site because of its
authority, unbiased and quality content, as well as the superior
relevancy to this topic. NON-PRINTPBS. Wide Angle. To have and Have Not. “Debate: What the WTO
Means for China.” This is website is from PBS and provides a lot of information about the episodes topic and its speakers. In it, two leading experts on China discuss its political and economic future. This source gives us an informed account of the political controversies and debates surrounding China’s accession into the WTO. REVIEW of my Research ProcessThe strategies that I used for finding information were very straight forward; I was lucky enough to have a topic that had mostly experts writing about it and there is relatively few published works published. I used the words China, and, WTO, and accession; and always found the best results that way. This is an academic topic which has been written about by many experts. I have found a few articles that were biased and a lot of articles focused on the affects of China’s entry into the global economy on the US, but overall it was very understandable, clear, and unbiased information. There were a lot more articles on the internet and in the periodical indexes than anywhere else and I think that this is due to the relative infancy of this topic. I found books that were projections of the future and solid historically focused writings as well but overall this topic is new and mostly written about by experts. The internet was the best source of information for me as the information I did find there was great in comparison to the vague reference or outdated information that was the majority of my findings at the school. | |||||||||||||