When China won membership in the World Trade Organization in December 2001, it had gone through an extended and arduous negotiation process that lasted more than 15 years.

China first submitted its re-entry application in 1986 to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, but negotiations dragged on past the establishment of the WTO in 1995. The process became more complex as more parties got involved and more demands were made on the Chinese economy.

President Xi Jinping, in his keynote speech at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017 in Davos, Switzerland, gave a graphic expression of what China had to go through: "There was a time when China also had doubts about economic globalization, and was not sure whether it should join the World Trade Organization. But we came to the conclusion that integration into the global economy is a historical trend. To grow its economy, China must have the courage to swim in the vast ocean of the global market."

The decision was quite courageous, and the prospects rather daunting. But history proves it was the correct path, particularly to facilitate China's integration into the global economy and provide support and incentivize deeper reform of the socialist market economy.

The terms of China's accession may seem quite harsh, but were perceived to be appropriate for its huge economic size as well as to warrant its move to embrace a market-based system. The administration of the United States encapsulated this conditionality with the phrase "commercially meaningful term".

With China's fundamental efforts to retain a type of economy focused on "socialism with Chinese characteristics", some of the requirements needed time and fine-tuning. Some of the terms have not even been met by more advanced economies. For example, China was required to eliminate all agricultural export subsidies for its entry into the WTO.

China had to submit its transition policies and measures for consultation and review with WTO member countries during the first eight years of its membership. This part of the accession protocol was called the Transitional Review Mechanism and had not been a component of other protocols.

In the process, thousands of legal documents had to be translated into English, which China was accused of delaying from time to time. At its accession, China was nominated for "non-market economy" status, which implies domestic prices in China may not be used to compare production costs in case of an anti-dumping investigation by a third country. This rendered China easily susceptible to frequent anti-dumping measures implemented by its trading partners. Although it was informally agreed that by 2016 China's "non-market" status would be up for review and may be revoked, this has yet to happen.

But in spite of some arduous requirements imposed on the Chinese economy, China has, as expected, benefited from its WTO membership. Through its own structural reform efforts and global market access opportunities, China climbed rapidly to become the world's largest exporter by 2010, sooner than most predicted.

Since 1978, when China began to open up, its economic performance – in terms of overall growth, lifting people out of poverty and international competitiveness – has been unsurpassed. In financial terms, progress has been made to clean up shadow financing activities, while the renminbi has been accepted as a global currency by the International Monetary Fund, which included it in the Special Drawing Right basket – international currency reserves to supplement member countries' official reserves.

In December 2018, at the 40th anniversary gathering in Beijing to commemorate China's reform and opening-up, President Xi confidently called the four decades "a glorious process".

Amid all these positive outcomes, China was mindful of the unfinished reform agenda. Back in 2007, former Premier Wen Jiabao gave a timely warning concerning China's adopted economic development model, saying it had become "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and ultimately unsustainable." This urge to deepen reform in China gained more traction from the report "China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious and Creative Society ", a joint effort by the Chinese government and the World Bank.

The report offers honest comments on China's key strategic economic challenges, which include the need for more competition within the economy, continuing reforms of State-owned enterprises, system-wide innovation, sustaining green growth, social protection and in particular for China to continue integrating with global markets.

With the launch of China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), the reform process deepened and pressed forward with greater speed. The most prominent push in this drastic reform can be seen in major areas of technology, services, SOEs and integration with the global economy.

With regard to technology, China is advancing its climb by investing heavily in research and development to shift from traditional labor-intensive manufacturing.

Some countries perceive China's efforts to become a dominant player in advanced technology as a threat, both in terms of security and hegemony over the global economy. In its massive endeavor to achieve technology targets, China may therefore need to be cautious in its tech transfer efforts and in heavy subsidies generated by this active industrial policy.

The "kicking away the ladder" mentality by advanced economies may hinder the technological progress of China and other countries in Asia. Companies from advanced economies were once given a free hand in investing and taking over firms in poorer parts of the world, but when economic conditions begin to reverse, poorer economies are blocked from investing in advanced countries' tech firms under the accusation of "forced technology transfer".

The most recent example is the transformation of Germany's automotive industry, where a devastating series of job losses is tolerated to prevent foreign takeovers.

Led by the likes of China, Japan, South Korea and India, for example, Asia will close the technology gap with the West sooner or later. Trade competitiveness would be enhanced and developing countries would cross the middle-income hurdle and compete with the industrialized world on a more even basis.

It used to be developing countries complaining of the lack of an even playing field at the multilateral trade level. But now it seems leading economies like the US and European Union would take over this complaint, even to the point where they demand a holistic reform of the WTO.

What is alarming is the threat posed by unilateral trade restrictions that can lead to a global contraction of trade volume, resulting in falling world investment and eventually to global economic slowdown. There is enough evidence that any economy, however large it may be, will not be able to solve its own trade deficit by using trade restrictions to penalize trading partners. The culprit country will always end up suffering from its own restrictions in terms of higher consumer prices and contraction in related industries, with little impact on its own deficit.

China's aggressive service sector reform has turned this sector into a new engine for economic growth, accounting for 52 percent of GDP in 2018 with particular emphasis on the rapid rise in knowledge-intensive services. In 2012, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the Chinese government co-organized the first China International Fair for Trade in Services. This year's fair expanded its scope widely and now has 130 countries and regions and 21 international organizations among its participants.

China's grand outreach plan to the world as encapsulated in the Belt and Road Initiative touches two of the strategic areas mentioned in the World Bank report "China: 2030". The connectivity platform of the initiative would not only maintain strong trade and investment links with the rest of the world, but also create a new regionalism that, with full ownership of participating nations, could buttress the weakening impact of multilateralism.

In providing relevant infrastructure investment for other developing countries while linking the less-developed western regions of China with Central Asia and Europe, the Belt and Road can also address the issue of inequality. As the initiative wades into sensitive areas like the debt burden of recipient countries, security issues along the maritime route and the role played by SOEs in foreign construction plans, it must maintain the open ownership principle, full transparency and lean on multilateral agreements from the WTO, such as the one on trade facilitation.

Based on China's long history, the past 18 years is too short a period to pass any definite judgment on the impact of its WTO membership. But it can be said since its accession in 2001, China has made great strides toward full compliance with the multilateral rules and regulations. And as China's membership has facilitated its massive economic reform to become one of the world's strongest trading nations, the world has also enjoyed the benefits of China's membership.

Some major members of the WTO, including the US, EU and Japan, are working together to introduce reforms into the organization, partly to address non-market practices mostly aimed at China. China, on the other hand, can also contribute by bringing in its own WTO reform proposals and can help to champion requests coming from developing countries. While searching for a multilateral solution to trade conflicts, ongoing trade tensions should not result in countries drifting apart and reduce the WTO's authority as the only multilateral platform that has proved able to deal with such issues.

In the future, China's impact on the organization is bound to strengthen, which does not mean other members will become less meaningful. President Xi has reiterated time and again that China's development hinges closely on the strength of the multilateral system.

It should be expected China will build on lessons learned from its WTO membership to, together with other members, forge a well-equipped organization to deal with rising trade conflicts, including the disruptive effects arising from the digital economy.

Supachai Panitchpakdi was director-general of the World Trade Organization from 2002 to 2005.