ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to highlight China’s e-commerce stratagem by showing the prevalent asymmetrical Internet access in e-commerce communication. We investigate the general experiences of (a) consumers connecting from China to e-commerce platform websites in other countries, and vice versa, and (b) consumers connecting from other countries to China’s e-commerce platform. The empirical evidence shows that (a) faces prohibitively long waiting times, if the access is not blocked altogether. By contrast, the average waiting time for (b) is short and reasonable. The hard evidence presented here suggests that China’s Internet censorship has established its unfair advantage in market access. This chapter further argues that the GATS is restrained from providing systemic solutions to the digital mercantilism problem. It is essential, therefore, that future e-commerce negotiations address this issue.
