Deng Xiaoping identified what is referred to as the four modernizations: industry, agriculture, natural defense, and science and technology. This is a particular useful metric to compare progress on a number of fronts. While these are particularly broad categories of trade opportunities and parts of the global market, there is generally a way that all aspects of policy can be molded to account for one of these four modernizations. The term modernizations itself provides a policy framing, with the assumption that something that is modern in the global context will be of a particularly progressive nature. However, I think this assumption can be challenged successfully if there is not proper consideration to be made to ensuring that there is necessary collaboration with global partners. In this case the equal partners would be the EU and US, respectively. Yet, as the author notes, China has showed a good-faith effort in promoting bilateral agreements with its trading partners. Its ascension into the WTO show that the nation is wishing and planning to adhere to this decades long goal of framing progress against the Four Modernizations. What would be interesting and worthwhile to explore is whether other developed nations have used these Four Modernizations to frame their own progress on a number of platforms, including trade policies that have been handed down from their membership in the WTO. While it is the focus of this text to measure Chinese progress on WTO standards, there is great value in learning how other nations have been able to demonstrate their own progress, and using a framework developed by another nation, in this case China, could be particularly helpful in that goal.
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