Has economic engagement with China failed?

Exactly 20 years ago, China acceded to the World Trade Organisation. In the decades since, the globalised world became what we know today, with hundreds of millions of Chinese and people around the world lifted out of poverty through free trade. But the promised liberalisation – both economic and political – doesn’t seem to have happened. China is now challenging western-led world order, and too difficult to disentangle from the world economy. So was it a mistake to allow China into the WTO, and has engagement failed?

With Stewart Paterson, author of China, Trade and Power, and Yu Jie, senior research fellow at Chatham House.