Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The economic and social costs of corruption-induced market distortions are widely recognized. WTO members must make a commitment to fight cross-border corruption while building trust and collaboration between industrial and developing countries to achieve broader WTO institutional reform.
Most observers examine the extent to which the Chinese government fulfills its WTO obligations. Carnegie's Veron Hung offers a different perspective. She examines a key aspect of China's legal system essential to China's implementation of its WTO obligations-independent judicial review.
China's accession to the World Trade Organization thrusts formidable challenges on Chinese leadership to honor promises relating to the country's rule of law developments. The United States and the international community should seize this unprecedented opportunity by directing more resources toward such reform efforts.
Marat Tazabekov, a journalist and publisher of the Kyrgyz news service AKI press, discusses political and economic reform in Kyrgyzstan.
On November 16-17, the China Program sponsored a two-day conference, "China after the 16th Party Congress," at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Twelve leading political scientists, economists, and sociologists from China, the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore met to discuss recent trends in the Chinese economy, politics, society, and foreign policy.
In many countries, tenets of the Washington Consensus -- privatization, trade liberalization and fiscal austerity -- have become politically noxious ideas. That is too bad. The consensus may be an impaired brand, but some of the ideas remain sound. The blanket repudiations of the Washington consensus in the early 2000s tend to be as superficial as their blanket acceptance a decade ago.
Ukraine began the WTO accession process in 1993, and is now entering the final stage of accession, as is evidenced by its passage of nine bilateral protocols on market access in the past 18 months, with traditional trading partners such as Slovenia, Latvia and Georgia, as well as Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, and most recently, India.
After initial consolidation and restructuring, Russian industry is on the verge of a big change. While the first steps to gain productivity required specific Russian skills, Russian businessmen understand that the future calls for foreign technologies and skills. Some are bringing in managerial and technical expertise, and others are selling their companies to foreign bidders.