The conclusion that China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was a failure from a US perspective stems from: 1) loading too many issues and expectations—including an entire panoply of national security and geostrategic concerns—on to the WTO and its trade-rules-based, binding dispute settlement system to address; 2) failure by the United States and the rest of the world to use the tools available as a result of China’s accession to the WTO to both protect their domestic markets and hold China to account for its WTO commitments; and 3) China’s U-turn away from market-economy reforms to a much more state-centric, Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-run the economy. Addressing the United States’ concerns with China will require working to strengthen the WTO and then using it to take on a more limited set of trade concerns while using other tools to address broader concerns over China, both bilaterally and in conjunction with allies and partners.

The extent to which Chinese goods exports faced unilateral trade policy changes taken by other WTO members is documented here and decomposed between those policy changes that specifically target China and those that do not. Chinese goods exposure to measures taken by the European Union, the United States, China’s regional partners, and those taken worldwide are also contrasted, in terms of scale, discriminatory or liberalising treatment, as well as timing. The degree to which China’s WTO membership protected its goods exports from worse competitive conditions since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis is assessed and found wanting.

Since its accession to the WTO twenty years ago, China’s image has shifted from a good student aspiring to assimilate itself into the multilateral trading system to one that is increasingly alienated from key WTO principles. How has China’s perspective on WTO been evolving? What are the reasons behind China’s changing perspective? This chapter addresses these questions from the Chinese perspective with a comprehensive analysis of the key moments in China’s first two decades in the WTO, followed by practical suggestions on how to engage China more constructively in the WTO and beyond.

Chapter 6 discusses building encroachment, which is a topic closely related to adverse possession—at least in the common law. Chapter 6 documents the three different doctrinal approaches to dealing with encroachment over boundary and focuses on the building encroachment doctrine enacted in 52 jurisdictions. The prompt protest rule and encroachers’ not acting in bad faith are easy to justify economically (though not universally adopted). Encroachers’ good faith is increasingly unlikely given the advance of mapping technology. A two-tier building encroachment doctrine (with safe harbor and sure shipwreck) is best. Even though this doctrine has been used as an example of a put option, it is not, and will be inefficient if treated as such.

This chapter examines how a state becomes a party to a treaty, including signature, initialling and ratification, where applicable. Whether a state can participate in a multilateral treaty depends on the terms of the treaty. The practice of the Council of Europe is examined. Signature may express consent to be bound but often signature will be subject to ratification. Ratification is the international act whereby a state establishes on the international plane its consent to be bound. It is to be distinguished from the domestic process which enables a state to ratify. Advice is given on the form and content of an instrument of ratification. A state may also consent to be bound by acceptance, approval or accession. Accession is primarily the means by which a state may become a party if it is unable to sign the treaty. The chapter also examines rights and obligations prior to entry into force, the possibility of withdrawing consent to be bound, and the ways in which treaties might be developed.

Chapter 3 deflates the myth that China’s state capitalism is a new problem with an extensive review of China’s WTO accession. Drawing from the negotiation records, we demonstrated that WTO Members have been well aware of the potential clashes between WTO rules and China’s state capitalism since the very beginning. Yet, contrary to those who argue that state capitalism is inherently incompatible with the WTO, the Members believed that practical solutions could be found. Thus, they meticulously identified specific aspects of the Chinese system that might undermine its WTO commitments and carefully crafted surgical solutions to address these problems in WTO-consistent ways. Such an approach is much better than the one asking for a complete overhaul of China’s economic system, as it not only minimises the resistance of China but also ensures that the problematic areas are fully addressed. Thus, the theory that the accession negotiation failed to address the problems presented by China’s state capitalism is unconvincing. Instead, the practical approach adopted in the negotiation demonstrates the faith among WTO Members in the ability of the WTO to act as a neutral forum.

Chapter 1 introduces the main theme of the book, that is, challenging the conventional wisdom that the existing WTO rules are inadequate to address China’s state capitalism and demonstrating that China’s WTO-plus obligations, coupled with the general rules on subsidies, do provide ways to address the problem. It also provides summaries of the chapters to explain the structure of the arguments in the book.

The essence of a human right is that it is afforded immediate protection, even if this protection is not absolute. Rights are ‘fundamental’ because their existence is not open to dispute, negotiation or compromise, although their substance is subject to interpretation. Rights are anchored in law and they underwrite legal as well as political action. Despite their interaction, human rights should not be equated with human rights law. This chapter will explore the appearance and evolution of human rights in EU law, paying particular attention to five themes: the history and systematisation of human rights in EU law; their initial appearance in EU law via adjudication rather than political deliberation; the relationship between general principles, fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights in EU law; the use of fundamental rights in EU law, in particular the scope of judicial review by the CJEU; and accession to the European Convention on Human Rights.

This chapter explores whether we can (and should) think of the EU as a unitary system or as one that allows for internal differentiation and layering, both in terms of the horizontal relationship between the EU Member States and the one between the EU and non-EU states. The chapter highlights the legal methods of differentiation, such as enhanced cooperation and opt-in and outs, and analyses the limits and pathologies of differentiating EU obligations. It also looks at the different models of differentiation that are available, beginning with the process of joining and leaving the EU, before moving on to think about the interaction between the EU and the EEA, the United Kingdom and the role of Free Trade Agreements. As we will see, the question of which model of cooperation to choose, or of how differentiated the EU should be, once again poses fundamental trade-offs between sovereignty and unity that ultimately depend on how we understand the EU’s purpose.

This chapter concludes this book by exploring the success, limitations and future global outlook of the pan-European UNECE environmental regime including challenges for future non-UNECE accession, drawing upon an unparalleled seventy years of experience supporting international law on transboundary watercourses and freshwater ecosystems. From the key findings, this book draws a series of overarching and cross-cutting insights into the rising impact and contribution of the UNECE regime to the clarification and development of international law, which also raises outstanding areas for future research. It explores questions of legitimacy as the UNECE regime moves towards its new global role. This research bears in mind the importance of distinguishing policy arguments for signing up to the UNECE regime with legal arguments. The problem arising from a legal perspective is to ask whether it is good legally when international courts or international institutions endorse a regionally specific detailed regime as global law? This analysis demonstrates that the UNECE environmental instruments were never intended to be geographically exclusive and have also already been co-developed by non-UNECE countries for some time. This research supports the UNECE’s endeavour to embrace a global role but cautions that a strong mandate from non-UNECE countries must drive this process.

Concerns about what is characterised today as dumping are not new.1 Initial responses to dumping are found in the Brussels Sugar Convention of 19022 and Canada’s first national anti-dumping law in 1904.3 Other common law countries soon followed.4 The issue of dumping was discussed both at the League of Nations and during the 1933 World Economic Conference.5 During the 1946 post-war negotiations of the ITO Charter, the United States proposed an anti-dumping provision modelled on its own Anti-Dumping Act of 1921. There was general agreement among the negotiating parties on the need to address anti-dumping in the ITO Charter. Already at that time, the focus was on developing disciplines governing the use of anti-dumping laws instead of prohibiting dumping.

In this chapter, I introduce the central claim of the manuscript – that the different types of treaty commitment need to be analyzed and considered as distinct when generating expectations of human rights behavior. The legal paths that states take concerning commitment to human rights treaties are consequential for how they engage with the law and human rights behavior. The chapter devotes attention to fine descriptive data analytics demonstrating a variety of differences across the four commitment actions.

This chapter addresses the topic of personal property. It first addresses the fundamental notion of property. It then explores how the scope of personal property has become more expansive as novel challenges to existing notions of property have arisen over time. The chapter considers the important distinction between real property and personal property. Sub-classifications of personal property are considered, including the distinction between chattels real and personal, choses in action and choses in possession. The chapter explores various types of possession and interference with possession giving rise to actions for trespass, conversion and detinue. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the nature of personal property rights can be lost through intermixture, accession or by becoming a fixture.

Chapter 5 explored the self-definition of the Classic Maya elite within a range of statuses, offices, ranks, and roles – marks of authority and entitlement that centred upon and radiated from a “holy” ruler. We now need to turn to how this collective noblesse went about constituting and maintaining a political community. Politics can never be reduced to a state of being since it always implies active, substantive acts that establish, maintain, and extend power relations. These acts are guided by formal and informal norms, rules, and protocols that express the structural properties of the system. To recover even an outline appreciation of these properties we must first take the textual record on offer, recognising its idealised, retrospective, and highly selective character, and then look beyond to what these tightly controlled narratives refer to only obliquely, or reveal only through statistical analysis. Very often it is the exceptions that demonstrate the rules, the anomalies and deviations that illuminate where orthodoxy gives way to exigency in a contingent world.