Tim Stratford is managing partner in Covington & Burling LLP’s Beijing office and a member of the International Trade, Corporate and Government Affairs Practice Groups. Mr. Stratford’s practice is focused on advising international clients doing business in China and assisting Chinese companies seeking to expand their businesses globally. As a former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, Mr. Stratford is the most senior former U.S. trade official working as a member of the U.S. business community in China. Except for the five years he spent in Washington, D.C. in government service (2005-2010), Mr. Stratford has lived and worked continuously in the greater China region since 1982.

While at USTR, Mr. Stratford was responsible for developing and implementing U.S. trade policy toward mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Mongolia. He worked closely with other senior U.S. and Chinese officials from numerous government departments and agencies to address problems encountered by companies engaged in bilateral trade and investment and co-chaired a number of important bilateral working groups and dialogues established under the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade and the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue.

Prior to serving at USTR, Mr. Stratford was General Counsel for General Motors’ China operations, where he was a member of GM’s senior management team in China and oversaw the company’s legal and trade policy work. Mr. Stratford also served previously as Minister-Counselor for Commercial Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and as Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Brigham Young University, and is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Mr. YANG Guohua is a professor at China Tsinghua University Law School, teaching A Study on China WTO Cases (undergraduate), Legal Problems in Sino-US Economic Relations (graduate students), Chinese Economic and Legal Systems from the Perspective of China WTO Cases (foreign students) and A Study on Tsinghua University (general education course for freshmen).

When he was working in the Chinese Ministry of Commerce from 1996-2014, he participated in the negotiations on China WTO accession and drafting the Accession Protocol and Working Party Report; he led a group of experts checking Chinese laws and regulations against the WTO rules and China commitments; he was the first Director and later Deputy Director General for WTO Legal Affairs within the Ministry responsible for WTO cases related to China. In numerous articles, speeches and over a dozen books, he tried to prove that the WTO established a good example for international rule of law and WTO membership contributed to the economic and social development in China, so he strongly advocated for the multilateral trading system represented by the WTO. He also has a rich background on trade policy making and international cooperation. For example, he was the head of Chinese delegations for intellectual property rights dialogues with the United States, the EU, Japan, Russia, Switzerland and Brazil, and for international conferences at Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), etc.

He is Executive Vice Chairman, WTO Law Research Society of China Law Society (China WTO Law Society); Arbitrator, International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC, China) and South China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission/Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration (SCIA, China); Member, Expert Group for Commercial and Maritime Trials, Supreme Court, China; Member, Indicative List for dispute settlement panels, the WTO Secretariat; Associate Editor, Journal of World Trade; Distinguished Legal Scholar Award, Beijing Law Society (1999). He was also IP attaché at Chinese Embassy in the United States, Washington, DC (2006.1-2008.9) and WTO Appellate Body member candidate (2016).

He graduated from Peking University Law School in 1996 (Ph.D) and Wuhan University Law School in 1994 (LLM). He was born in 1965.