Multilateral versus Bilateral and Regional Trade Liberalization: explaining China's pursuit of free trade agreements (FTAs)

In recent years, at the same time it has pursued multilateral trade negotiations via membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has embraced a regional approach to trade liberalization by negotiating a number of bilateral or regional free trade agreements (FTAs) with its trading partners. This paper examines China's increasingly active FTA diplomacy and seeks to explain China's motives for pursuing expanded FTAs. Specifically, this paper argues that while China's FTA activism reflects considerations about enhancing China's influence in the Asia–Pacific region, capturing the economic gains of FTA participation, and minimizing the trade and investment diversion resulting from the competitive dynamics of regional trade liberalization, the move toward expanded FTAs is also consistent with the desire to create alternative bargaining forums over trade issues that could help to stabilize expectations as well as the need to use FTAs to control the pace of trade liberalization so as to accommodate protectionist pressure emanating from domestic interest groups. In particular, this paper highlights the impact of domestic politics on China's FTA negotiations through a detailed discussion of how pressure from protectionist seeking interests influences the scope and depth of China's FTAs.