Province, Center, and the World Trade Organization: Liaoning and China`s WTO Accession

Abstract

The provinces of Northeast China, known as China’s “rustbelt,” have been slow to implement reforms to reduce the role of the state in their heavily industrialized economies. With China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the wider opening of China’s economy to global forces that this move entails, however, the region must confront the exigencies of intensified market competition. This paper seeks to begin to understand the impact of China’s WTO membership from a regional perspective by examining how Liaoning, the most populous and most heavily industrialized province in the region, has prepared for the country’s WTO accession. This analysis evaluates the role that the central government (the authorities in Being) has played in this process in relationship to that of provincial authorities to date, and the analysis reflects on what this interaction suggests about the ways in which Liaoning will address the challenges and opportunities of economic globalization in this latest chapter of reform in China. As with other examinations of provincial issues seen through the lens of central-local relations in China, this paper is concerned with what this analysis suggests about evolving capacity and structure of the Chinese state.