China’s devolution to dictatorship makes it abundantly clear their acceptance into the WTO was a mistake.
It does not need to make value judgement about the internal politics, for those issues we have other international bodies.
It’s also a rules-based organisation. China breaks the WTO’s state-owned entity rules, its access around domestic market rules, its freedom of navigation rules, its IP protection rules, et cetera.
China was admitted when it was non-compliant, with the belief that admission would drive opening and compliance [1]. That hypothesis is not sustained by evidence.
[1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/01/how-the-west-go...
From the decision, each party can discuss a settlement, and if no agreement is reached the wronged party is free to apply whatever retaliation it judges fair to the wrongdoing party.
The WTO’s decision would serve as a backing of the retaliation, to prove they are not just arbitrary.
In that sense China breaking the rules is a issue with the “victim” country who needs to retaliate if no other means is available, with eventually help from ally countries if they want to make an example.
That’s what is happening. China repeatedly broke rules and ignored international arbitration orders (see: UNCLOS tribunal brought forth by the Philippines). They were given the benefit of doubt (a) under Obama and (b) before they became a dictatorship.
The rules of the World Trade Organization must be set by the world trading countries, not by the US. Maybe China violates so many rules because they are tailored to (made for and by) the US.
Said another way: who says that the western way is the only or the best way? Is our system working so well? We need rules which allow for different economic systems to trade with each other.
Once you have world-wide acceptable rules, you enforce those rules. Breaking the rules is part of being in the system, and exactly the reason why a WTO is needed: to arbitrate.
The rules I described are the rules of the WTO. They are a reasonable precondition for being treated as a free trading nation, a designation which comes with tremendous economic benefits but also risks to other trading nations.
> to arbitrate
The last time China was taken to international arbitration (by the Philippines) it ignored the rulings. China is presently brazenly breaking WTO rules. If you’re playing a board game with someone who continues to break the rules, the solution isn’t to talk about it while continuing play.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization
Historically, trade disputes were settled with freezing of trade, reciprocal trade abuse or war.
> That's not perfect in any way, and that's crazy slow
You're right about how slow the WTO process is:
Per your Reuters link: China's chicken tariff was enacted in 2010. The WTO ruling against it was in 2018, 8 years later, but it's unclear if the dispute has actually been resolved:
> [China's Ministry of Commerce said] that China would assess the WTO report and carry out “follow-up work” in accordance with WTO rules.
That sounds extremely non-committal to me, and I couldn't find any more recent updates the first several pages of Google News results. However, I doubt anything has actually happened based on prior precedent:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/business/us-china-trade-e...
> The United States could press its argument with the World Trade Organization, which oversees global trading rules and prohibits big loans from government-controlled banks at artificially low interest rates. But the W.T.O. requires many contracts and government documents to prove cases, evidence that can be hard to get in a tightly controlled country like China.
> Even when the W.T.O. rules against China, persuading the country to comply can be challenging. One such ruling, involving China’s restrictions on foreign electronic payment systems, was issued nearly six years ago. China is still mulling how it will comply — despite numerous complaints from the Obama administration and more recent nudges from the Trump administration.
If the current trade dispute is really about the "China 2025" program, attempting to resolve it through the WTO could take until 2032 or later, which seems a bit late.
That's what happened when the US had a dispute with Brazil over cotton tarifs protection [0], or countless other trade disputes countries have with each other. Even recently there was a chicken dispute case with China [1].
That's not perfect in any way, and that's crazy slow, but doesn't seems worse than playing chicken run through twitter announcements. If the point was really to do something about China's trading behavior, I think it would be done through the WTO, and in particular it would need more buying from the other main countries.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil–United_States_cotton_di...
[1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wto-chicken/uni...