By Xiang An’bo, Research Team on “WTO’s Rules on SOEs Reform: Future Performance and Key Issues”, DRC

Research Report, No.231, 2020 (Total 5975) 2020-9-25

Abstract: Although the SOEs issue is a defensive one for China in terms of WTO’s reform on SOEs, it is still a way of easing our external pressure through accelerated domestic reform in a bid to reach consensus with other countries. With this in mind, China needs to recognize the importance of this issue, help advance WTO’s reform on SOEs in a proactive and open manner, and take an active part in its progress. In making rules for WTO’s reform on SOEs, China is opposed to discriminatory disciplines set against state-owned enterprises by the name of WTO reform. China aims to guard its national economic sovereignty and maximize its interests through the approach of coordinating the domestic and international development of SOEs with catered solutions, integrating state-owned economy with market-based economy tailored to the international market and rules. As for its position on this issue, China will align its regulations with the reasonable ones among international rules on the prerequisite of national sovereignty, take a dialectical stance on treating SOEs as public institutions, defend the ownership-neutral SCM rules, allow commercial SOEs to follow their business instinct in their operation, consider enhancing the transparency of SOEs, and ease the regulative impact on SOEs issue through further reform and exceptional clauses.

Keywords: WTO’s rules on SOEs reform, the SOEs issue, SOEs reform