ABSTRACT
The first part of this paper briefly reviews existing studies on China's decision to pursue FT A negotiations, focusing in particular on arguments emphasizing strategic and economic considerations as key motivations for China's FTA initiatives. The paper then proceeds to discuss two additional factors that have prompted China's turn toward bilateral or regional preferential trade agreements: the desire to develop additional bargaining forums that could help to stabilize expectations and the need to control the pace of liberalization so as to accommodate demands for protection from domestic interest groups reeling from the impact of China's WTO trade liberalization commitments. In particular, it will be argued that domestic opposition to undertaking substantial trade liberalization via FT As helps to explain why many of China's FT As are of considerable low quality, characterized by sectoral exemptions and limited depth of the liberalization commitments. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the design of China's FTAs for the prospect of broader trade liberalization at either the regional or the multilateral level.
