China's Participation in WTO Dispute Settlement Over the Past Decade: Experiences and Impacts

The year 2011 marked the 10th year of China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) membership. Acceding to the WTO demonstrates China’s attempt to integrate in the global trading system as one of the world’s biggest economies. To date, China has been involved in 31 WTO cases as complainant or respondent and has gradually become one of the most frequent users of WTO dispute settlement mechanism. This article provides a skeletal review of China’s participation in WTO dispute settlement over the past decade and analyzes some of its salient and systematic impacts on China. Active participation in WTO dispute settlement inevitably poses challenges to China, but it is helpful for China to improve its trade and social–political governance regimes and to maintain healthy and constructive trade relations with other WTO members.