China’s Free Trade Agreements

China ’s Free Trade Agreements: Domestic Constraints and International Learning

Seminar by Yang Jiang, Australian National University

Yang Jiang’s presentaion will analyze how domestic politics have constrained China’s pursuit of diplomatic and economic objectives through free trade agreements (FTAs), and what Chinese policymakers have learned from FTA negotiations with other countries. It will start with listing several political and economic motivations behind Beijing’s foray into various bilateral and regional preferential trade agreements. Then it will look into China to analyze how the domestic conditions have constrained the state’s ability to coherently and effectively realize its objectives for economic diplomacy. More specifically, it will focus on the resistance from domestic actors originated from their experience or resentment with globalization, the growing political power of some domestic actors because of partial reform, and the limited bureaucratic capacity and coordination among ministries. This will be followed by discussing what China has learned from other countries during FTA negotiations in the areas of domestic regulation, and concepts about market economy, democracy and international cooperation. The empirical data come from her field research in China in 2006 and 2007, drawing heavily from the cases of China’s FTA negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Australia.

Yang Jiang is a PhD candidate from the Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University. She submitted her PhD thesis titled “China’s Policymaking on Regional Economic Cooperation” in May 2008. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Beijing and Singapore respectively. Her publications include “The Politics of ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement,” in Transformations: A Region in the Making, edited by Vincent Chua Reyes (Manila: Far East University Press, 2004), “Australia-China Free Trade Agreement: China’s Domestic Politics and the Roots of Different National Approaches to FTAs”, Australian Journal of International Affairs 62, 2 (2008), and “China’s Move to Preferential Trading” (co-authored with John Ravenhill), Journal of Contemporary China (forthcoming 2009).

Arranged by the Asia Research Centre