Decryption“China and the WTO: a novel about globalization” (4/5). While Washington gives the impression of deserting the World Trade Organization, Beijing, conversely, is developing its hold there.
Before depositing delegates and ambassadors at the foot of the austere building of the World Trade Organization (WTO), based in Geneva, the sedans with the tinted windows must first go along a discreet Chinese garden called “Gusu’s garden”. In the summer of 2012, 111 tons of stones, tiles, stalagmites, rocks and wood were transported by boat from the distant country of Asia to develop, as we can read on the inaugural plaque, this symbol of the “The confidence that China has always had in the multilateral trading system”. Beijing had also taken care to promise, in golden letters engraved in marble, the ” serenity “ in one “Constantly renewed decor”.
Wishful thinking. Because, a few years later, the economic landscape was transformed with the shattering irruption of China in world trade, but without the serenity. One has only to see, at the beginning of the month of December, a few days before a ministerial conference finally canceled, the anxious expression of certain negotiators who smoke cigarette after cigarette in the “Gusu garden”. “Multilateralism is in turmoil, the WTO is looking for a future, and negotiators must nevertheless continue to negotiate”, one of them quips.
The organization, once a symbol of regulated and peaceful globalization, is accused of having let China seize, in barely twenty years, 14% of world trade and thus have accelerated deindustrialization in rich countries. . After accusing the WTO of having “Let China get away with a murder”, in reference to the closings of factories in the United States, the former American president, Donald Trump, cut, at the end of 2019, the world organization of its appellate body by blocking the renewal of its members, which de facto makes its rules inoperative since no sanction can be imposed on a country.
The situation has hardly improved since Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January, despite more conciliatory speeches. The seat of US ambassador to the WTO is still vacant. “There is no more American leadership on any subject”, tells, looking annoyed, a European negotiator.
Impressive delegation
While the United States gives the impression of deserting the organization in Geneva, China is deploying there at high speed. During the last trade policy review, this fall, it sent an impressive delegation to respond to each of the 2,200 questions or criticisms addressed to it, before writing a 500-page summary.
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