Chinese Regime Quietly Lost Market Economy Status at WTO

The Chinese regime on June 15 quietly lost the battle of demanding the World Trade Organization (WTO) to recognize its market economy status. On the same day, the European Union, for the first time, has decided to impose tariffs on Chinese companies that operate abroad. Scholars believe that this is a major set-back for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Beijing has given up the lawsuit of requesting the WTO to force the EU to recognize its market-economy status, Bloomberg reported on June 16. According to the article, the Chinese regime quietly lost a landmark dispute “providing the EU and the U.S. with greater legal certainty to combat low-price Chinese exports with artificially high tariffs.” The lawsuit was initiated by the CCP in 2016, claiming that China should be automatically granted the right to be treated as a market economy in anti-dumping investigations 15 years after joining the WTO. It only pursued the case against the EU. However, the EU and the United States disagreed because they believed that the CCP has given China's exports an unfair competitive advantage by means of massive subsidies.