Chinese And Vietnamese Labor Rights And State-Owned Enterprise Laws

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed free trade agreement currently being negotiated by twelve Asia-Pacific nations. The stated goal of the negotiations, which are led by the US, is to create a free trade area holding member states to high standards of trade liberalization and regulatory arrangements. Some have speculated that one unstated goal is to exclude China. Observers note that the agreement is intended to be open-ended, allowing for accession by new member states after the agreement has been codified by initial member states.This paper sets out to analyze the possibility of Chinese and Vietnamese accession to the TPP from the perspective of the two countries legal reform. With regard to China, it seems unlikely that commercial legal reform will meet proposed requirements in the near-term. With regard to Vietnam, a country, that much like China also has large state-owned enterprises and labor policies at odds with the USTR TPP labor proposal, are there signs that Vietnam will speed up legal reforms on a divergent path from China, in effect to "westernize" its commercial legal regime and labor policies to a greater degree than China would be willing to do? If not, are the stated goals of the TPP disingenuous?Today many scholars make claims that China and Vietnam will have problems meeting the TPP’s expected legal requirements. However Chinese and Vietnamese shortcomings in the two areas of legal reform have yet to be examined extensively. This paper’s primary contribution to existing scholarship lies in its in depth comparison of the two countries progress in these areas. The conclusion will attempt to shed light on whether there is any significant difference between the two.