Has Joining WTO been a Positive Force for China's Economy?

Has joining WTO been a positive source for China’s Economy?
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Introduction
In December 2021, WTO (World Trade Organisation) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala described China becoming a WTO member in 2001 as a 'pivotal event in the history of the multilateral trading system' (WTO, 2021, p.1). This could be attributed to the fact that one-fifth of the world population found representation in the global trade and it also meant that other WTO members could ensure mutually beneficial trading relations with a large and fast-growing economy (WTO, 2021, p.1). After becoming a member of WTO in 2001, China gradually opened its market over the past 20 years by reducing tariff rates from 14.8% to 7.4% (2.8% lower than what was committed). In addition, nearly 120 sectors in trade in services have been opened (20 more than what was committed) (WTO, 2021). As a result of this opening up of the economy, the Chinese economy has realised several economic benefits as China became the second-largest economy in the world from the sixth largest in 2001 and has also achieved 11 times growth in the GDP (WTO, 2021). However, there is a need to examine if there are certain gaps in the economic benefits, as discussed next.
Economic Benefits to China
The first major economic benefit as identified by Dychtwald (2021, p.1) is the emergence of industry giants and new-age technology companies in China that are not only serving the Chinese markets; but have a strong global presence as well. Some of these companies include Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance among others. Dychtwald (2021, p.1) attributed this benefit to be a result of China being a WTO member, China had to weaken its SOEs (State-owned enterprises) and allow for greater participation by the private sector. Boden (2012, p.2) added that this liberalisation has resulted in the SOEs making business decisions based on the commercial considerations only, otherwise earlier it was primarily according to the policy of the Chinese government). Boden (2012, p.1) highlighted that opening of the Chinese economy is visible as the effect of this benefit is not confined to businesses but it also trickled down to workers in the form of higher wages and better working conditions, thereby increasing the income for all members of the society.
Despite the openness, as argued by Canales (2021, p.1), there are still concerns about the extent of liberalisation in the Chinese economy as evident from the scrapping of Ant Financials’ IPO in 2020. The startup was expected to have a $37 billion IPO (at a valuation of $300 billion). However, two weeks before the IPO, the company's founder Jack Ma criticised the financial regulatory system in the country which was followed by the regulators and introduced new regulations for the online lending industry with immediate effect. These regulations impacted 40% of revenue for the startups and the IPO was suspended. Thus, there is a need to examine the extent to which Chinese-based companies can operate without any interference from the government.
The second economic benefit is the strong integration with the world economy. Boden (2012, p.1) mentioned that as part of the membership of the WTO, China was required to reduce various tariffs that benefitted ...