The accession of the People's Republic of China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 significantly transformed global economic relations both de facto and de jure. At the regional level, China's WTO accession served as a catalyst for the juridification of economic relations in East Asia based on Regional Trade and Investment Agreements (RTAs). This was a novel development for the region, since East Asian states had previously followed a largely informal, market-based approach to regional economic integration, essentially limiting rules-based economic integration to the global level...