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Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific
The Shanghai Outlook on the WTO: Local Bureaucrats and Accession-Related Reforms
By Peter H. Koehn
Abstract
The actions of local-level bureaucrats will largely shape China's compliance with implementation measures associated with WTO accession. The article begins to address the critical issue of whether local bureaucrats are disposed to embrace or resist compliance by analysing data collected through a 1997/1998 survey of the dispositions of 426 lower-, middle-, and upper-management officials in Shanghai regarding three key accession-related institutional reforms (legal and regulatory, state enterprise, and combating local protectionism). The study finds broad early support for the selected accession-related policies among municipal and submunicipal bureaucrats of diverse backgrounds and organisational locus. The prevailing set of dispositions is expected to facilitate compliance at the most challenging and decisive levels of implementation. Study findings further suggest that support for the selected institutional reforms is more extensive among public and private bureaucrats working at domestic agencies and companies in Shanghai than it is among the Chinese middle-management staff of foreign-invested and export-oriented enterprises who might perceive that their firm will lose some comparative advantage if these policies are successfully implemented. Given that favourable dispositions toward technology importation and foreign capital investment are strongly related to the three selected implementation measures, one would expect bureaucratic support for WTO compliance efforts to be deepened and sustained, provided that China realises technology and capital gains from participation in the global trade regime.