Sinic Trade Agreements and China's Global Intellectual Property Strategy

Since the early 2000s, the European Union and the United States have pushed aggressively for the development of bilateral, plurilateral and regional trade agreements. Termed economic partnership agreements (EPAs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) by the European Union and FTAs by the United States, these instruments seek to transplant laws from the more powerful signatories to the less powerful ones. Although the use of non-multilateral trade agreements is not limited to the European Union and the United States, the scholarly literature thus far has focused mostly on these agreements. To fill the void, this chapter closely examines the bilateral and regional trade agreements established by China -- termed Sinic trade agreements (STAs) -- and the strategies used to deploy them. This chapter begins by examining China’s growing engagement with the developing world, the underlying goals of STAs and the negotiation strategies behind those agreements. Using the China–New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (CNZFTA) as an illustration, the chapter points out that the STAs negotiated thus far provide only very limited coverage of intellectual property issues. It further explores why China has kept a low profile in the international intellectual property arena. The chapter concludes by discussing the future ramifications of STAs