Dennis Shea, former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative and former U.S. Ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO), recently wrote an article in The Hill exposing three major evils of the Chinese Communist Party‘s non-compliance with international norms and broken promises. He praised the efforts of the U.S., Europe and Japan to establish trilateral cooperation to fight the Communist Party, but also urged the international community to go beyond WTO reform and develop a broader strategy to curb the challenges and threats posed to the world by the Chinese Communist Party’s misdeeds.
Shea’s article is titled “The U.S. and Europe Must Go Beyond the WTO to Address China’s (CCP) Challenges. He argues that the U.S. and Europe cannot put all their hopes on WTO reform when dealing with the unfair trade practices of the Chinese Communist Party. He reminded Europe and the United States that while working together to confront the CCP, they need to recognize the CCP’s non-compliance with international norms in three areas.
First, the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly broken its promises
Shea argued that the past international trade rules could not meet the economic challenges posed by the CCP because the CCP never honored its promises.
He cites numerous examples of the CCP’s broken promises, such as: the CCP’s failure to comply with the World health Organization (WHO) International Health Regulations’ requirement for timely reporting of health crises, which led to a global pandemic of the CCP virus (COVID-19); the CCP’s terrorist actions against the Uighurs in Xinjiang, which violated its promises in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the CCP’s imposition of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, which violated its Sino-British Joint Declaration, which guarantees a high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong; and the CCP’s expansion of its power in the South China Sea, in violation of its commitments under the Law of the Sea Treaty.
Shea said, “We are seeing this pattern of behavior (by the CCP) repeated in international trade.” He said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has documented each of these vicious acts by the Chinese Communist Party.
Because of the general lack of transparency in the CCP’s international trade policies and practices, Shea found the EU’s proposal to reinvigorate the trilateral system of cooperation between the U.S., Japan and Europe to develop new trade rules to curb the CCP’s economic penetration “heartening. But he also warned the United States, Japan and Europe, can not rely only on the trilateral cooperation system or rely only on reform of the WTO to deal with the Chinese Communist Party. He said, “If you put all your hopes on the WTO, you are likely to play right into the hands of the Communist Party and be played by it.”
Second, the Chinese Communist Party uses trade as a geopolitical bargaining chip
Another act of non-compliance with international norms, Shea noted, is that the CCP uses trade as a geopolitical bargaining chip to force other countries into line by kidnapping trade.
As an example, he said that because Australia requested an independent investigation into the origins of the CCP’s viral pandemic, the CCP immediately retaliated against Australian exports. “This is a clear violation of WTO rules.” In addition, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines have all suffered similar trade retaliation from the Chinese Communist Party.
Shea also mentioned Taiwan. A recent example, he said, is that on Feb. 26, Chinese Communist Party customs refused to continue importing Taiwan pineapples without advance warning, citing the presence of pests in Taiwan pineapples. This is yet another line of trade retaliation against Taiwan by the CCP, which is safely inconsistent with international norms and “weaponizes trade goods and uses them as a means of retaliation for political gain.”
Third, the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly used negotiations to set traps for the United States
The third villainous act of the CCP’s non-compliance with international norms mentioned by Shea is that the CCP often uses negotiations to set traps for the United States and other countries. He mentioned that, as former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger warned the Biden administration on Feb. 3, he hopes the United States will not fall into the CCP’s negotiation trap again.
“For the United States, we need to put pressure on the Chinese (Communist) state to resolve as quickly as possible those things that the Chinese (Communist) state is doing that are harmful to our national security, prosperity and democracy,” Bomen said. “Don’t fall into the trap that Beijing has set Time and time again, which is to try to lure the United States into long-term, formal mid-level negotiations.”
Shea said not to expect negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party to be completed quickly, and that “the Communist Party is very good at adopting a delaying policy when it comes to negotiations.” He argued that one strategy the Trump administration has used to successfully deal with the CCP is to not allow the CCP to stretch out negotiations for too long. He cited examples from the time the CCP once took 19 years to negotiate limits on fishing subsidies; in the Boeing-Airbus subsidy dispute, the CCP also negotiated with the WTO for 16 years before settling the issue. He believes this is unworkable.
He also spoke of Trump Administration Trade Representative Lighthizer, who had noted that the U.S. had been caught in the Chinese Communist Party’s negotiating trap, delaying resolution on many issues for 20 years while “the U.S. trade deficit with China and Chinese (Communist) intellectual property rights violations against the United States escalated during that time.
Shea concluded by calling on the U.S. and the EU to work together to address the CCP and pressure it to end its bad behavior by holding it to the same standards. He argued that the EU should change its overly cautious attitude toward the CCP at the WTO and act jointly with the US. He proposed that the U.S. and EU should: jointly impose sanctions on Chinese companies engaging in predatory or illegal practices; establish common countermeasures in response to retaliatory trade actions by the CCP; work together to improve supply chain resilience for key products; jointly develop technical standards for future dominant industries; and coordinate the development of tariff policies.
Recent Comments