Law and the Market Economy in China

This volume concerns several aspects of China's changing market based economy. These include commercial contract enforcement, corporate structures, competition law and other issues related to China's membership in the WTO. In the past two decades, the rapid integration of China's economy into the global marketplace has created obligations and expectations of non-discrimination and regulatory transparency in domestic markets. The Chinese government has responded by demanding better governance within major companies, market sectors and public administration generally. However, as the articles in this volume show, it has struggled to find a corporate structure capable of absorbing external equity investment and participation but still amenable to direct and indirect state guidance. It has also moved cautiously in creating legal controls over unfair competition. Moreover, the protection of state owned enterprises, which serve as vehicles for domestic economic, social and political policy, has been a recurring issue in China's WTO trade disputes.

Contents: Introduction; Adaptive efficiency and financial development in China: the role of contracts and contractual enforcement, Guanghua Yu and Hao Zhang; Enforcing commercial judgments in the Pearl River delta of China, Xin He; How do we know when an enterprise exists? Unanswerable questions and legal polycentricity in China, Donald C. Clarke; New hope for corporate governance in China?, James V. Feinerman; China's competition policy reforms: the anti-monopoly law and beyond, Bruce M. Owen, Su Sun and Wentong Zheng; Against antitrust functionalism: reconsidering China's antimonopoly law, Salil K. Mehra and Meng Yanbei; Market dominance by China's public utility enterprises, Xueguo Wen; Globalization as boundary-blurring: international and local law firms in China's corporate law market, Sida Liu; Trade, investment and beyond: the impact of WTO accession on China's legal system, Julia Ya Qin; Banking on China's WTO commitments: 'same bed, different dreams' in China's financial services sector, Daniel C. Crosby; China's accession to the WTO government procurement agreement - challenges and the way forward, Ping Wang; Trade and environment: challenges after China's WTO accession, Yuhong Zhao; The honeymoon is over: the US-China WTO intellectual property complaint, Donald P. Harris; Name index.

Perry Keller is Senior Lecturer in Law at King's College London, UK