Nedumpara and Zhou's edited volume presents a highly topical and long overdue assessment of the treatment of non-market economies (NMEs) under the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The volume consists of 12 chapters written by authors having extensive experience in the subjects they cover. It focuses mainly on anti-dumping methodologies, applied by the major users of these remedies, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Union (EU), India, Mexico, and the United States (US), in their domestic investigations against Chinese imports. In addition, the volume explores various conceptual problems arising from the use of these methodologies, as well as their WTO-consistency, especially in the light of the recent expiry of the provisions of subparagraph (a)(ii) of Section 15 of China's Accession Protocol. As is well known, these provisions conferred on WTO Members the right to replace China's domestic prices with surrogate values in calculating dumping margins, provided that certain conditions were fulfilled (NME methodology). The volume also addresses, albeit in a more limited manner, similar methodologies in the accession documents of other newly acceded WTO Members, considered as ‘NMEs’, such as Viet Nam (Joshi, ‘Shifting Sands’ p. 204).

The emphasis on China in the discussion of NMEs is understandable, given the size of China's economy, as well as its unique structure and importance for the global trading system. The fundamental structural and ideological differences between the economic models and policies of China, on the one hand, and those of the major Western economies, on the other hand, have long been regarded as a serious bone of contention in the WTO, especially between China and the US.Footnote ¹ Until these differences are resolved, in either the WTO or bilateral fora, the prospects of unlocking the WTO dispute settlement system through filling the Appellate Body vacancies seem dim. At the forefront of the ongoing discussions on possible solutions to these differences is the continuing possibility of using NME methodologies to counter China's ‘state capitalism’,Footnote ² even after the expiry of Section 15(a)(ii).Footnote ³ This may explain the emphasis of the volume on the subject of NME methodologies in China's Accession Protocol.

However, despite the importance of this subject, the trade activities of NMEs, including China, raise a much broader range of WTO-related issues, such as various trade-distorting practices of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in goods and services trade, trading rights in NMEs, protection of intellectual property, and ‘input dumping’ in newly acceded Members that did not take on Section 15-type WTO-plus commitments. The volume does not deal with any of these additional concerns.

In the ‘Introduction’, Nedumpara and Zhou set out the context for the volume. The authors aptly note that the key terms ‘market economies’ and ‘NMEs’ are not defined in WTO law, and mean different things in different jurisdictions. They further observe relatively little significance of the subject of NMEs in the pre-WTO global trade order, which was created by market economy countries, and explain how this subject escalated into a systemic issue at the time of the accession of China to the WTO, warranting special rules, such as Section 15.

In the following chapter, ‘China's Long March to Market Economy Status’, Nedumpara and Subramanian provide a concise historical account of the concept of ‘NME’ in the GATT 1947, including the history of the currently outdated Second Ad Note to Article VI. Created in the mid-1950s, the Second Ad Note recognized for the first time the peculiar place of NMEs in the global trading system, and, for this reason, established special rules for determining the normal value of imports from certain extreme types of NMEs, in particular centrally planned economies, in anti-dumping investigations.Footnote ⁴ While outlining the GATT history of NMEs, the authors engage the reader into the subject by referring to landmark domestic anti-dumping investigations against imports from such countries, including the US Polish Golf Cart case, and bring to light various practical difficulties that have arisen in these investigations. The authors also contribute to the vast literature on the meaning of the imperfectly formulated text of Section 15, although they could have expanded on the negotiating history of this provision. In their view, the expiry of subparagraph (a)(ii) of Section 15 does not render the use of NME methodologies against Chinese imports completely inapplicable in the future. Nedumpara and Subramanian end their chapter with a brief review of NME methodologies in selected jurisdictions, in the light of the Appellate Body's findings on the appropriateness of some aspects of such methodologies in EU – Biodiesel.Footnote ⁵

Nedumpara and Subramanian's chapter is nicely complemented by Miranda's insightful comments on China's thorny and challenging transition from its NME model in his chapter, ‘How China Did Not Transform into a Market Economy’. As the title of this chapter suggests, Miranda considers that this transition is yet to be completed, due to many market distortions prevailing in China's economy, such as various distortions in the cost of raising capital, and those in the prices of labor, land, raw materials, and energy, to name a few. While Miranda acknowledges that China is not the only country that takes measures to lower the cost of capital and production inputs, what really distinguishes China from other markets, states Miranda, is both ‘the massiveness of the distortions’ and ‘the fact that the Chinese Government takes upon itself … the task of “keeping markets in order” and directing key business decisions’ (pp. 95–96).

In her chapter ‘The Termination of the Grandfather Clause in China's Accession Protocol’, Feng proposes an alternative interpretation of Section 15, describing this provision as a ‘grandfather clause’, which, by its very nature, may only be permitted to apply during the agreed period of time, that is, 15 years after China's accession. Without delving into the matter in much detail, Feng argues that many concerns relating to government-created distortions in China, including the provision by the Government of cheap raw materials and distortions implemented through the activities of SOEs, may be ‘easily remedied’ through WTO subsidy disciplines (pp. 223–114, 126).Footnote ⁶ Given that, in Feng's view, the NME methodology in Section 15 is no longer applicable, she questions the WTO-consistency of the EU's new anti-dumping regime, which was established in Regulation 2017/2321 of 12 December 2017, and which allows the use of surrogate values to tackle ‘significant distortions’ in the exporting country, such as China.

The volume also discusses additional important issues closely related to the subject of NME methodologies. One of these is the simultaneous application of anti-dumping and countervailing duties (CVDs) to the imports from NMEs (‘double remedies’), which Kaszubska addresses in a stimulating and thoughtful manner in her chapter, ‘Double Remedy’. Not only does Kaszubska track the evolution of the EU and the US's approach to applying CVDs to such imports from the 1980s to the present time, she also explains in a convincing manner the problematic aspects of the simultaneous use of these trade remedies in both NME and market economy contexts, which has already given rise to two WTO disputes. In Kaszubska's view, considering the frequent use of ‘double remedies’ in national jurisdictions, this issue will unlikely disappear from the WTO's agenda in the near future. Furthermore, Bhatnagar, Arora and Das, in their chapter, ‘External Benchmark Choices’, review comprehensively the use of external benchmarks in both domestic CVD and anti-dumping investigations, in the light of relevant WTO case law. Finally, Zhou, in his chapter, ‘The Issue of “Particular Market Situation”’, critiques the emerging trend among the anti-dumping authorities of certain Members to address imports from NMEs through the determination of a ‘particular market situation’. He further embarks on a challenging task of interpreting this concept under the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement, given the absence of any meaningful WTO jurisprudence on this matter.

One of the key strengths of this volume lies in its in-depth analysis of the systematic use of NME methodologies across a wide range of national jurisdictions, both developed and developing countries. While this subject is addressed to some extent in some of the aforementioned chapters (in particular those written by Nedumpara and Subramanian, and Zhou), Joshi, Vermulst and Sud, Bahri, Notani, Jha and Raturi present their critical and detailed reviews of these methodologies in chapters dedicated to specific national jurisdictions, such as respectively the US, the EU, Mexico, and India.

In their ‘Conclusion’, Nedumpara, Zhou and Subramanian summarize the key conclusions in the volume. The authors anticipate that the debate on the use of NME methodologies to counteract perceived market distortions in China will remain active in the years to come. In light of its significance for major economies, including China, this debate calls for the reassessment of WTO trade remedy rules, which clearly fail to address important structural differences between diverse economic models of WTO Members, whether some of them may or may not legitimately be called ‘NMEs’.

Overall, Nedumpara and Zhou's edited volume is a very timely and valuable contribution to the existing literature on the treatment of NMEs, in particular China, in domestic trade remedy investigations. It will no doubt serve as a useful guide for national trade remedy authorities. It addresses the subject of NMEs in a comprehensive manner beyond a purely legal analysis of domestic anti-dumping regulations, by also explaining the captivating history of NME methodologies in the GATT 1947 and the WTO, as well as their political and economic rationales.