This is from a Presidential Memorandum issued by President Trump today, directing the U.S. Trade Representative to determine "whether to investigate any of China's laws, policies, practices, or actions that may be unreasonable or discriminatory and that may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation, or technology development":
Section 1. Policy. ...
The United States is a world leader in research-and-development-intensive, high-technology goods. Violations of intellectual property rights and other unfair technology transfers potentially threaten United States firms by undermining their ability to compete fairly in the global market. China has implemented laws, policies, and practices and has taken actions related to intellectual property, innovation, and technology that may encourage or require the transfer of American technology and intellectual property to enterprises in China or that may otherwise negatively affect American economic interests. These laws, policies, practices, and actions may inhibit United States exports, deprive United States citizens of fair remuneration for their innovations, divert American jobs to workers in China, contribute to our trade deficit with China, and otherwise undermine American manufacturing, services, and innovation.
I often hear allegations about China's forced technology transfer, although I have never seen a good description of how exactly this is said to take place. But assuming the practice does exist, is there a WTO violation in there somewhere? It seems to me that perhaps GATT Article III is a stretch, but how about Article X:3(a):
Each Member shall administer in a uniform, impartial and reasonable manner all its laws, regulations, decisions and rulings of the kind described in paragraph 1 of this Article.
The first hurdle here is proving that what China is doing constitutes the "administration" of certain laws, regulations, etc. Then you would have to show that the administration of the laws, regulations, etc. has been done in an improper manner (I think the "impartial" and "reasonable" elements have the best chance of success).