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There is growing debate over whether China’s economic model can be managed within the rules of the multilateral trade system, a debate with major implications for international order. Critics argue that the China model is a systemic rival to the liberal trade order, a view that implies future decoupling. For those who reject the rivalry view, the default position is to propose more trade agreements with China, with the goal of driving liberal reforms in the country. This article engages the debate by contributing a conceptually informed and empirically supported analysis of China’s institutional development. Combining ‘second image’ insights with a comparative capitalism framework helps explain why nations evolve distinct varieties of market economy, which then shape their multilateral preferences. Applying these insights to China’s institutional development suggests two things: (1) the country is in transition to a socialist, rather than liberal, market economy, grounded in a fundamentally different legal and normative order; (2) the socialist market economy shapes Chinese preferences towards challenging the liberal trade order at a systemic level (i.e. over the rules of the game, rather than within them). Empirically, the article highlights two modes of systemic contestation by China that confirm the paper’s conceptual expectations.

China’s socialist market economy and systemic rivalry in the multilateral trade order