How China’s role in the global order has changed

(Edited and refined by Candice Chan, with the assistance of AI translation.)

Following the passing of former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji at the age of 98, a scene from a documentary series on former Chinese President Jiang Zemin has taken on renewed historical resonance. In it, Zhu recalls a pivotal episode in the China-US negotiations over China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Zhu said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee was in the middle of an economic meeting when Jiang told him: “Go, quickly. Whatever you do, don’t let her leave.” Jiang was referring to Charlene Barshefsky, then the chief US trade representative. The US had announced that Barshefsky had booked a flight for the following day, and was preparing to leave Beijing for home.

What followed was a final round of intensive negotiations lasting six days and six nights. On 15 November 1999, China and the US finally signed a bilateral agreement in Beijing paving the way for China’s accession to the WTO. Two years later, on 11 December 2001, China formally joined the organisation. From its application in 1986 to resume its status as a contracting party to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), China had spent 15 long years negotiating its way into the global trading system.

Two men, one legacy

The episode offers an opportunity to revisit the historical roles Jiang and Zhu played in China’s economic transformation. Building on the reform and opening up initiated by Deng Xiaoping, the two political partners jointly steered China’s economic transformation in the 1990s, laying much of the crucial groundwork for its transition from a planned economy to a socialist market economy.

A memorial marking the centenary of Jiang’s birth was held in Beijing on 17 August; the following day, Zhu’s remains were cremated at Babaoshan in Beijing. With the commemoration and farewell taking place just a day apart, attention has once again turned to that momentous era, prompting reflection on the external environment China faced then, and where the country finds itself today.

Joining the WTO was one of the most consequential decisions of the Jiang-Zhu era. Before and around the time of China’s accession, pessimism and even fierce scepticism were widespread at home. Critics feared that opening up the market would devastate domestic industries and worsen the wave of lay-offs already caused by reforms of state-owned enterprises. Some even accused the leadership of “selling out the country”.

WTO: opening doors to the world

History, however, has shown WTO accession to be a major turning point in China’s economic development. Before joining, China had to face a contentious annual review by the US Congress of its most favoured nation (MFN) trade status, leaving its access to the US market shrouded in uncertainty. After accession, China secured permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status and more stable and predictable access to the US market. As the country became more deeply integrated into the global trading system, its manufacturing potential was unleashed and international capital and industrial supply chains poured into China at an ever-growing rate.

By tapping into the global trading system and the international relocation of industries, China rapidly expanded its export manufacturing sector. After joining the WTO in 2001, from about US$266 billion, its merchandise exports soared, and by 2009 it had become the world’s largest exporter of goods. At the same time, China gradually built the world’s most comprehensive and extensive industrial supply-chain system, becoming the “world’s factory”, in every sense of the term.

China had, in effect, exchanged institutional reform and market opening for a place in the global division of labour and access to a much larger market. The West, of course, continues to question whether China has fully honoured the commitments it made upon joining the WTO. But what the US perhaps did not anticipate at the time was that China would not remain confined to low-end manufacturing such as footwear, headwear and toys once it became part of global industrial supply chains. As its industries moved up the value chain, China advanced into high-end fields such as satellites, rockets and artificial intelligence, gradually emerging as a major competitor to the US.

Seen through the lens of the Jiang-Zhu era, one of the great questions confronting China at the time was how to venture beyond its borders and integrate with the rest of the world. Going global was not simply an economic choice; it was closely bound with China’s own capabilities and the international environment in which it found itself.

In the 1990s, China was still relatively weak in terms of overall national strength. Its industrial and technological capabilities had considerable room for improvement, it depended heavily on foreign investment and trade, and its voice in the international system was relatively limited.

The external environment was equally complex. From the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999 to the collision between Chinese and US military aircraft over the South China Sea in 2001, China had relatively limited room for manoeuvre and few means of defending its interests within an international order dominated by the US and the West. Accelerating reform and opening up was therefore about more than economic development; it was also an important means of strengthening China’s overall national power and securing a place within the global system.

China today is a very different country. Over more than three decades since the “Jiang-Zhu era” of the 1990s, it has developed a vast economy, comprehensive industrial supply chains and a formidable manufacturing system, while steadily strengthening its capabilities in areas such as technology and the military. Its position within the international economic system has risen substantially. The strategic room China now has to manage relations with the US and conduct international affairs is also on a different level with the past. The shift from “connecting with the world” to “deeply participating in and shaping the world” is perhaps one of the clearest distinctions between the Jiang-Zhu era and the Xi Jinping era.

Soft power

That transformation can also be seen in more subtle cultural narratives. Take the popular Chinese anti-war film Once Upon a Time in the Middle East. It tells the story of a chef from northeastern China, played by Shen Teng, who travels to the Middle East to support his family and repay his debts. Working as the head chef of a local Chinese restaurant, he brings Chinese dishes such as whole roast lamb, iron-pot stew and kung pao chicken into an unfamiliar world.

When war breaks out, the characters do not pick up weapons and cast themselves as “superheroes”. Instead, they pick up their woks to rescue and help others and to take a stand against war. It is a striking contrast with the familiar “American hero saves the world” narrative of traditional Hollywood films: one is about defeating the enemy and celebrating the hero; the other is about rejecting war and focusing on ordinary people.

Of course, one cannot simply equate a film with Chinese government policy, but the shift in narrative is nevertheless telling. In the early years of reform and opening up, Chinese people who ventured overseas largely did so to conduct business, find work and earn money. Today, China is not merely a participant in globalisation; it is also beginning to tell its own story of how it engages with the world.

From the frantic effort all those years ago to keep the US trade negotiator in Beijing and continue negotiations over China’s WTO accession, to the image on the big screen of a Chinese chef wielding a wok on a foreign battlefield to convey a message of peace and opposition to war, more than three decades have brought changes that go far beyond the scale of China’s economy. What has also changed is the way Chinese people see the world, the way the world sees China, and China’s role in the global order.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “从入世到龙餐馆，中国世界角色之变”.

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