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Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to

journalists, experts and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.

There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well.

How did the Chinese see these issues?

Exactly 20 years ago, China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization. It was after 15 years of arduous negotiation and China promised to liberalize its market to liberalize its society as some of the strings attached. But 20 years on, under presidency, China in many ways is decidedly more illiberal than it was in 2001.

So what's letting China into the world economy through the WTO a mistake?

Some economists and policymakers in the West have argued it,

but the subsequent decades of global trade, not to mention the poverty alleviation that happened in China,

make it a difficult calculation.

What should the West have done instead, if anything,

and how should the West engage with illiberal economies in the future? Joining me now are two eminent experts in the field. First is Dr. Yu Jia, Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House,

who listeners might remember from the last episode of 2020 when we were talking about dual

circulation. And we're also joined by

Stuart Patterson, the author of China, Trade and Power, Wide of West's economic engagement

has failed, who has decades of experience working in Asia in investment management.

Welcome to the podcast both. Stuart, perhaps you can start by explaining what were the

conditions for China's accession to WTO at the time.

Yeah, so obviously the accession process was a very long and drawn out one and it took about 15 years to get there.

For context, before China's accession to WTO, China was trading with the rest of the world, but particularly the United States,

on a very asymmetric basis, with a pretty good market access to develop markets and very

little in return from the American and European perspectives. So the whole point of WTO

...