ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to identify continuity and change in the revision of China's national role conception for various organizations or arenas of global economic governance. China's role in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is taken as a starting point, where the People's Republic of China (PRC) transitioned from being an object to being an active subject shaping the rules for further economic globalization. The chapter argues that China has continuously developed its set of roles without explicitly taking a new role in global economic governance. This supports recent observations that the PRC has started to test new roles rather outside the well-established framework of global economic governance instead of providing leadership within. The WTO offered a venue for revising and testing alternative ideas regarding China's national role conception. China's role playing in international organizations has become more comprehensive, but a radical change in China's role conception towards global economic governance is not in the cards.
