ABSTRACT
The major multilateral economic institutions that make up the global economic regime relevant to China include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). A regional organization, the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC), has a secondary and yet nonetheless significant role in bringing China into the international economic system. These organizations have tried to promote China’s integration into the world economy through a logic that is quite consistent with “engagement” as defined in the Preface to this volume.1 Moreover, judging by the evolution in attitudes of key domestic policy makers and bureaucrats within China, and changes in Chinese policies since the late 1970s, the effort of multilateral economic institutions to bring about engagement appears thus far to have been successful in encouraging China to play by the “rules of the game.” At a minimum these institutions have not thwarted the goals of engagement. Although Chinese negotiators bargain hard to protect China’s interests, their bargaining is within the realm of what we expect to see of any country with significant economic leverage, and does not constitute an attempt to overturn the established regime norms. In this sense, China is not a “dissatisfied rising power” (to coin the term used by Randall Schweller in Chapter 1, this volume) and engagement is an appropriate response.
