Shanghai in the decade since China’s accession to the WTO

China formally joined the WTO in 2001. This was a landmark event-not only did it mark China’s entry into the mainstream of economic globalization, but it marked a whole new starting point in the reform and opening up process that had begun in the 1980s. China has accelerated its integration with the world’s economy since then. It has achieved astonishingly fast economic growth, to become the world’s second biggest economy and the world’s biggest exporter and second biggest importer. It has basically secured its status as a world economic power.