In an interview with Inside Fashion, SMU Associate Professor of Law Henry Gao, who is also currently serving on the WTO Chairs Program advisory board, commented that "rules on competition, state-owned enterprises, e-commerce, intellectual property rights, government procurement, labour, etc in the [Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP)] agreements are much higher than China's current standards". He was commenting on the technical reasons as to why China did not have a seat at the TPP table.