Here are two things that New Zealand, Vietnam, Peru, Japan and the US have in common. First, they all hope to join a nascent trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the biggest game in free-trade town since the collapse of the Doha round of World Trade Organisation talks. Second, none of them is China.
The two are very much linked. No one will say it out loud, but the unstated aim of the TPP is to create a “high level” trade agreement that excludes the world’s second-biggest economy. The 12 countries now hoping to join – which also include Canada, Mexico, Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Australia – make up 40 per cent of global output and about a third of world trade. That’s a big club to be barred to Chinese entry.
There are two motives at work. The first is to wind back time to before China’s accession to the WTO in 2001. Many politicians, trade unions and businesses now rue the day that China was let in. China got a huge lift from gaining access to global markets. But, the argument goes, it paid only a small price for admission. Joining the WTO did not stop China from “manipulating” its currency, from rigging its tender procedures, from funnelling cheap finance to its state-owned behemoths, or from systematically flouting intellectual property rules. The view that China is a freeloader and a cheat rather ignores the fact that today’s advanced economies – including Britain, the US and Japan – all pursued rampantly mercantilist policies during their take-off phases. But there you have it.