The WTO rules were not written with China, or its unique economic-political structure, in mind. China has elements of a capitalist system, but is still run by a communist government. There are many influential government-owned companies (China’s oil and gas giant, Sinopec, took in more money in 2019 than any other company in the world, other than Walmart), and even private companies are heavily subjected to government influence. According to the China Daily (itself owned by the CCP), nearly 70 percent of the almost two million private companies in China had internal CCP groups in 2017.

i love when neolib school that hates me gives me bourgeois class conscious bangers that make me so happy

I wonder if whoever made these slides considered that it might be because of these tight political controls that allowed China to lift so many people out of poverty. After all, most countries are capitalist, and none have come close to the sheer scale of China’s development.