“Creative compliance?”

China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. The first ten years after China's WTO accession suggest that the country has achieved greater progress in achieving compliance in some sectors than others. ¹ One of the most problematic sectors in the accession negotiations, both at the bilateral level (particularly with the European Union and the United States) and at the multilateral level (through the Working Party for China's accession based at the WTO headquarters in Geneva) was telecommunications services. There was wide expectation that telecommunications services would pose many challenges to China's WTO compliance.