Challenges for WTO Implementation: Lessons from China's deep integration into an international trade regime

China's formal accession to the World Trade Organization begins a process of deep integration that will require the implementation, monitoring and enforcement of newly harmonized standards. This article identifies challenges in that deep integration process, drawing on data from China's ten-year struggle to implement, monitor and enforce international standards for the certification and marketing of organic agriculture products. The political economy of rural China is described as a fragmented entrepreneurial state in which officials use state authority to privilege market activity. This creates a set of structural barriers and elicits local state resistance to the implementation of international trade regimes. State entrepreneurs pursue alternative forms of compliance, disguise state participation in the market, and exploit their control over information, in an effort to resist monitoring and enforcement regimes.