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Begin New Search Political Geography China Publishing Institution Centre for International Governance Innovation Publication Year within 10 Years

11. Does Canada’s Foreign Trade Policy Give Innovating Canadian Firms a Competitive Edge Internationally?

Author:
Olena Ivus and Marta Paczos
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
In recent years, Canada has adopted the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Like other modern international trade agreements, CETA, the CPTPP and the CUSMA include protections for innovators’ profits and technologies in the form of intellectual property rights (IPRs) regulations. These trade agreements will have a first-order impact on the volume and composition of trade in goods and innovation with sensitive intellectual property (IP) in Canada, as well as having an impact on global welfare distribution. But is Canada’s membership in these agreements good for Canadian firms looking to compete globally? This paper begins with a review of the IP protections instituted through recent trade deals involving Canada. It discusses the nature and scope of Canada’s IP obligations under CETA, the CPTPP and the CUSMA and explains how these obligations fit within the current Canadian legal framework. The changes in the standards of IPRs under these agreements will have a first-order impact on the volume and composition of trade in IP-sensitive goods, innovation and global welfare distribution and so deserve thorough debate. The paper then proceeds with a broader discussion of the reasons to include IP provisions in international trade agreements and the rationale for international coordination of the IPRs policy. Next, the paper discusses how IP provisions in trade agreements limit the freedom to use IP policy to promote national interests, while acknowledging that the various IP obligations are counterbalanced by several flexibilities, including the right to establish local exhaustion policies. The paper concludes with policy recommendations.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, NAFTA, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Innovation, and USMCA
Political Geography:
United States, China, Canada, Asia, North America, and Mexico

12. International Cooperation: Is the Multilateral System Helping?

Author:
David M Malone and Rohinton P. Medhora
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
This paper includes essential history of how the multilateral world has evolved over the last 150 years, followed by an examination of several types of multilateral systems: the United Nations and related organizations (including the World Bank group and the International Monetary Fund), and the World Trade Organization; regional organizations; and cross-cutting multilateral or plurilateral groupings with more limited, generally consultative purposes, such as the Group of Seven and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China). It concludes with some reflections on the implications for multilateralism of a defection from its attractions and principles by key actors.
Topic:
International Cooperation, World Trade Organization, World Bank, Multilateral Relations, IMF, and BRIC
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, India, Asia, Brazil, South America, and North America

13. The Belt and Road Initiative: Motivations, Financing, Expansion and Challenges of Xi's Ever-expanding Strategy

Author:
Alex He
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
This paper argues that with more objectives added since its inception in 2013, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has evolved into a much more expansive grand strategy that includes a package of themes and goals. It examines the policy-making process of the BRI by exploring the motivations behind the plan President Xi Jinping proposed and how the initial Silk Road projects have developed into China’s package of strategies over the past few years. The priorities and performance of China’s investments in the BRI are discussed from the angle of geographical distribution, routes and projects, priority sectors and the connection between the BRI and the previous “going out” strategy China started at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The model and the specific ways China finances and invests in BRI projects, to a great extent, decided the nature of the China-led global infrastructure investment plan. BRI financing is reviewed in detail. Based on the geopolitical and geo-economic analysis of the BRI in the previous parts, the implications of the BRI for global governance as it goes beyond the ambitious infrastructure investment plan are revealed. The risks and problems facing the BRI and the controversy and criticism it has encountered are also addressed. Finally, the paper summarizes the BRI’s ever-expanding themes and the problems and risks it faces, and their implications for the future of the BRI.
Topic:
Development, Imperialism, Infrastructure, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China and Asia

14. Digital Trade at the WTO: The CPTPP and CUSMA Pose Challenges to Canadian Data Regulation

Author:
Patrick Leblond
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
On the margins of the Group of Twenty leaders’ meeting in Osaka, Japan on June 28-29, 2019, Canada and 23 others signed the Osaka Declaration on the Digital Economy. This declaration launched the “Osaka Track,” which reinforces the signatories’ commitment to the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations on “trade-related aspects of electronic commerce.” In this context, unlike its main economic partners (China, the European Union and the United States), Canada has yet to decide its position. The purpose of this paper is thus to help Canada define its position in those negotiations. To do so, it offers a detailed analysis of the e-commerce/digital trade chapters found in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the North American Free Trade Agreement’s replacement, in order to identify the potential constraints that these agreements could impose on the federal government’s ability to regulate data nationally as it seeks to establish a trusting digital environment for consumers and businesses. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Canada’s CPTPP and CUSMA commitments could ultimately negate the effectiveness of future data protection policies that the federal government might want to adopt to create trust in the data-driven economy. As a result, Canada should not follow the United States’ position in the WTO negotiations. Instead, the best thing that Canada could do is to push for a distinct international regime (i.e., separate from the WTO) to govern data and its cross-border flows.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, World Trade Organization, European Union, and Digital Economy
Political Geography:
United States, China, Europe, Canada, Asia, and North America

15. China and International Financial Standards: From "Rule Taker" to "Rule Maker"?

Author:
Hongying Wang
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Following the global financial crisis, international financial standard-setting bodies granted emerging economies unprecedented representation. Some observers expected the existing system of international financial regulation to be undermined by the larger number of players and their diverging interests from the traditional standard setters. This paper examines whether China, the largest emerging economy, has influenced the international financial regulatory regime. It finds that China has, by and large, been a “rule taker” so far, but points out some important signs of change. It argues that with improved technical capacity, greater stakes in international financial standards and rising structural power, China is poised to increase its participation in the making of international financial standards.
Topic:
Regulation, Global Political Economy, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

16. Made in China 2025 as a Challenge in Global Trade Governance: Analysis and Recommendations

Author:
Anton Malkin
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
This paper provides a reassessment of Made in China 2025 (MIC 2025) — China’s industrial policy framework aimed at helping the country overcome the much-maligned middle-income trap — in the context of global trade governance. It suggests that China’s industrial policies have been viewed too narrowly — without sufficient attention to longer-term global governance issues — by a large segment of the global business and policy-making community. The paper argues that the general aims of MIC 2025 and the policies that underpin them are not unreasonable, given the increasingly prevalent dilemmas in global trade that China’s leaders are grappling with. These include problems of international development arising from growing global industrial concentration — driven by the growth of the intangible economy — and China’s shrinking access to importing and developing technological components (such as semiconductor chips) that are increasingly characterized as “dual-use” by China’s trading partners. This suggests that resolving the concerns of China’s trading partners regarding China’s industrial policies requires global trade governance reform to ensure an equitable, rules-based global trading order that addresses the legitimate needs of developing and middle-income economies in acquiring foreign-owned technological components and know-how, for the purposes of economic development. The paper concludes by outlining specific recommendations for Canada’s policy makers in improving their economic relationship with China in the context of MIC 2025.
Topic:
Development, Industrial Policy, Science and Technology, Governance, and Free Trade
Political Geography:
China, Canada, Asia, and North America

17. Crisis in the WTO: Restoring the Dispute Settlement Function

Author:
Robert McDougall
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
The impasse in the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the appointment of new members of the Appellate Body is just one symptom of crisis in cooperation on trade. Driven by skepticism about multilateralism and binding dispute settlement, and by a growing strategic and economic rivalry with China, the current US administration has elevated longstanding US concerns about WTO dispute settlement to new heights. The inability of WTO members to exercise their collective authority to interpret the meaning of their WTO commitments has meant that the Appellate Body is effectively not subject to any checks and balances. As other WTO members blocked US efforts to negotiate more member control, the United States increasingly turned to unpopular unilateral mechanisms, culminating in the current block on new appointments as part of its more disruptive trade policy. Assuming the United States will eventually return to rules-based trade, restoring the WTO dispute settlement system to full capacity and enhancing its legitimacy will likely require some changes. This might include improving mechanisms for political oversight, diverting sensitive issues from adjudication, narrowing the scope of adjudication, improving institutional support and providing members more say over certain procedures. Preserving compulsory, impartial and enforceable dispute settlement in the WTO will require an accommodation of different perspectives on how the system should function. Achieving this, in whatever form, will contribute to maintaining and even strengthening multilateral cooperation on trade.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, World Trade Organization, Global Political Economy, and Multilateralism
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, and North America

18. A Deeper Look at China’s “Going Out” Policy

Author:
Hongying Wang
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
In recent years, the world has seen rapid growth in China’s financial reach beyond its borders. Following the announcement of a “going out” strategy at the turn of the century, many Chinese enterprises have ventured to invest and operate abroad. After three decades as primarily a recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI), China has now emerged as a major FDI-originating country as well. Much of China’s foreign aid is closely entangled with its outgoing FDI, and it has also been rising. Since 2013, the Chinese government has been pushing for a new One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, aiming to connect China with countries along the ancient Silk Road and a new Maritime Silk Road via infrastructure investment. In addition, since 2009, China has actively promoted the internationalization of its currency, the renminbi (RMB). There has been a great deal of anxiety about the motivations behind China’s going out policy and its possible international consequences. Many view it as an expression of China’s international ambition and a strategy that threatens the existing international order; however, that is not the whole story. An equally important but often less understood issue is the role of China’s domestic politics and political economy in shaping its new activism in foreign financial policy. Moreover, it is unclear how successful the going out policy is. The complexity of China’s going out policy was the topic for a recent round table discussion hosted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Foreign Policy Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.[1] Participants discussed a number of issues around two broad themes: the impact of domestic political economy on China’s foreign economic policy and the challenges for China’s external financial strategy — in particular, its OBOR initiative.
Topic:
Markets, Political Economy, Monetary Policy, Infrastructure, Foreign Direct Investment, and Financial Markets
Political Geography:
China

19. Growth, Innovation and COP 21: The Case for New Investment In Innovation Infrastructure

Author:
Céline Bak
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
On the way to Washington, DC, for a September 2015 visit, Chinese President Xi Jinping stopped in Seattle, WA, to sign an agreement aimed at combatting climate change by increasing the business ties between Chinese and US clean technology companies (South China News 2015). Five US states signed the agreement on commerce between China and clean-tech businesses from California, Iowa, Michigan, Oregon and Washington. On the same day, Bill Gates’s energy company, TerraPower, signed an agreement with the China National Nuclear Corporation for joint cooperation on next-generation renewable and fusion nuclear power. In early 2015, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund invested in General Fusion, a Canadian company based in Vancouver, to advance its energy innovation.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Science and Technology, Treaties and Agreements, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
China

20. China and Global Energy Governance under the G20 Framework

Author:
Alex He
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
This paper explores China’s perspectives and practices in its quest for overseas energy supply security and its participation in international energy cooperation since becoming a net oil import country in 1993. It compares the traditional approach, in which China mainly focuses on bilateral means to pursue its overseas energy supply security, and the new concept of energy security, in which greater involvement in global energy governance, in particular in the Group of Twenty (G20), is highlighted to promote China’s energy security. The paper argues that China still retains a bilateral and regional cooperation approach, while making progress in developing closer cooperation with existing major global energy governing institutions. The One Belt, One Road strategy proposed in 2013 is regarded as a strengthened version of the bilateral and regional cooperation approach. Chinese academic circles constitute the main forces advocating China’s more positive participation in global energy governance. The G20 provides significant institutional arrangements to coordinate big powers to govern the international energy markets and to address climate change. This paper suggests that, given China’s growing prominence at the G20, it could be the proper platform for the country to play a more active role in global energy governance.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Oil, Regional Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, Governance, and G20
Political Geography:
China