China's utilization of the WTO dispute settlement system since its accession shows an overall growth with distinctions at different stages. The majority of the existing commentaries generally argue that China seemed to take a reluctant and passive attitude towards WTO disputes in the first five years of its WTO membership and then changed to an active and aggressive one in the last five years. This paper reflects on why China has taken a more active approach and argues that China's recent activism is not only a purely voluntary action as a result of the rising legalism in China but also a reluctant choice or response. As China lacks other legally available and practical means and before turning directly to unilateralism, it chose the WTO venue as the last resort. This was largely due to the insurmountable difficulty that it had encountered in its past bilateral efforts to amicably resolve critical trade issues and because of the grave political pressure on China's imbalanced position under the WTO dispute settlement system. This paper also argues that China still seems far from the moment when it can be satisfied with its litigation performance on the international level and that China needs to continuously enhance its legal competence in a comprehensive way to better utilize the WTO dispute settlement system.
Journal of World Trade